


Fox Commodore

by DeathknightQ



Series: Royal Navy of the Caribbean [1]
Category: Pirates of the Caribbean (Movies)
Genre: Multi, Period Typical Attitudes, attempted rape of a prisoner in later chapters, can't trigger warn hard enough for the last one, pairings mostly included for filtering
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-09
Updated: 2020-11-09
Packaged: 2021-03-09 09:27:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 12
Words: 33,294
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27468709
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DeathknightQ/pseuds/DeathknightQ
Summary: Commodore Norrington takes in a neglected pet and suffers the consequences. (An AU where Norrington is in the correct genre, namely, an age-of-sail fantasy war flick. That's it, that's the series.) Revised, updated, and complete.
Relationships: Gillette/James Norrington, James Norrington/Elizabeth Swann, James Norrington/Jack Sparrow
Series: Royal Navy of the Caribbean [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2006929
Comments: 6
Kudos: 19





	1. Rain

**Author's Note:**

> Norrington should have been promoted to admiral. “Commodore” is a temporary title granted during emergencies and later revoked. But it’s what the film used, so I kept it. The idea of the spirit and demon worlds being actual other worlds is borrowed from Japanese anime, not Shinto or Buddhist tradition. The original version of this fic was written between the first and second movies (and abandoned when the second movie killed my soul). It is now an AU.

"Honestly, sir, if it’s not too bold… it was very good of you to step aside for Mr. Turner. Many lesser men wouldn’t have," Gillette said nervously. He glanced at his commander. The Commodore’s face was as impassive as ever, as if he hadn’t heard the Lieutenant’s words. Gillette looked down at the wet cobblestones. Silence fell between the two officers as they walked, the only sound the steady drum of the rain. After several minutes, Norrington replied. 

"Thank you, Gillette. But any man would have done the same." 

"I don’t think so, sir. I wouldn’t have been able to let the woman I love marry another, to spend the rest of my life wanting something I can’t have." 

"That is too bold, Lieutenant," Norrington said crisply. 

"I apologize, sir. Do you plan on attending the wedding?" 

"I’ll decide that six months from now, when the time arrives. What do you think of the weather, Gillette?" Norrington could make his voice sharp and a sigh at the same time, and he did now. 

"Understood, sir. I merely thought you might want someone to talk to. As for the weather… the rain reminds me of home, sir." Norrington had no reply, he merely stepped inside an inn as the rain worsened from a gentle shower to a drenching torrent. He and Gillette sat at a small table near the back, separate from the noisy crowd. 

"What can I get you, mates?" a serving-woman said, smiling flirtatiously at Gillette. 

"Water," Norrington said, not really paying attention. 

"Bread, cheese, and soup, and whatever red you have, if you please," Gillette said. The serving-woman looked back to Norrington, who indicated he did not desire food. A few moments later the woman returned with Gillette’s food and Norrington’s water. Gillette stared at his meal hungrily, then back up at the Commodore. 

"Carry on," Norrington said with a wave of his hand. 

"Would you at least take some cheese, sir? I can’t eat if you don’t." 

"Very clever, Gillette," Norrington said, but he did pick up a morsel of cheese and take a bite even though he wasn’t hungry. When Gillette began eating, Norrington held the cheese in his hand. He looked around, observing the other patrons. Most were gaily passing the time, singing and drinking. A few were enjoying their solitude, and fewer still were brooding. A fur hat in the corner caught his eye - it was dirty and matted, absolutely filthy. His lips thinned in distaste. The hat moved. Small, dark eyes looked at him from beneath small, pointed ears. The back nose at the tip of the animal’s pointed snout sniffed the air. 

Norrington frowned, tearing off a small morsel. The creature was clearly malnourished. With an inward sigh, Norrington dropped the arm that held the morsel, then waved the food invitingly. The animal sniffed hungrily. After a few moments, Norrington tossed the cheese to the animal, who caught it and devoured it. Norrington tore off another small bite, no more than a quarter of an inch in diameter, and threw it a few inches in front of the animal. The next landed a few inches beyond that. Both were devoured, as were the next four bites. Each time, the timid creature dodged forward to take the food then jumped back a few steps. And each time, it moved a little closer until it was finally in arm’s reach. Norrington offered another bit of food, bread this time, in his hand. 

The animal was a small and obviously not British fox. Around its neck it wore a gold-weave collar with black embroidery. 

"You obviously belong to someone," Norrington murmured as the fox took the tidbit. "And they don’t do their duty by you at all." He placed the next bite by his foot, then picked the fox up when it ate. It struggled in the commodore’s hands until bribed with more food. Norrington gently stroked the fox’s head while filling Gillette’s now-empty bowl with water. He offered it to the fox, who drank greedily. Every muscle was tense, ready to flee. 

"You’re a soft touch, sir," Gillette commented. The commodore looked up guiltily. He’d forgotten the lieutenant was there. 

"It’s what any decent man would do, Gillette. Enough," Norrington said as the fox protested being wrapped in his coat. "I haven’t given you any cause to mistrust me." The fox stilled, and stayed wrapped in the commodore’s coat the entire walk to Norrington’s home. 

Norrington’s butler, Jervis, showed no surprise to find his master soaked to the skin because he had wrapped something small and helpless in his coat. He merely removed the commodore’s hat and wig and called for towels. The commodore, for his part, sat down and unwrapped his passenger. 

"Pardon me, sir," Norrington said, "or rather, ma’am." The fox promptly jumped out of his hands and dived beneath the parlor couch. The commodore accepted the dry, heated cloths from Jervis and wiped off the worst of the wet. Servants removed the commodore’s saturated uniform as Norrington sloughed it off. A maid heaped more wood on the fire. 

"Thank you, Mr. Jervis," Norrington said. He walked over to the fireplace and leaned against the mantle, letting the heat dry his breeches and shirt. He glanced at the couch and saw two pricks of light observing him from beneath it. 

"A stray, sir?" Jervis asked. 

"See that the maids are informed. I do not wish to be awakened by flying dishware and shrieks of ‘vermin!’" After Jervis left, Norrington’s dark brows knit together. What was he thinking? He was a busy man, nearly as often at ship as he was home. He did not have time to rehabilitate an abandoned fox. At the same time, he had a duty to help all those he could- Damn it! This had nothing to do with duty or virtue. The simple truth was that his words to Elizabeth a week ago had been true: he was a commodore at thirty, but he was also unmarried at thirty. 

"I’m lonely, kit," he said aloud. The pricks of light shifted sideways. "Don’t like that, do you? Then what would you rather be called, miss fox? I can’t read your collar." There was no response, only a brief disappearance of one light. "Then I’ll call you by your title: pet." The fox’s eyes closed. Norrington heard her settle in for the night. With a sigh, Norrington went upstairs and did the same.


	2. Progress

The next morning, Norrington had Jervis partition off the parlor and place a large, shallow tub full of sand in the corner. Norrington also ordered a deep box filled with blankets to be placed in the room and all things sensitive to animal waste to be removed. This was done as the commodore ate breakfast in the parlor. He set a bowl of fruit next to his chair. As predicted, the fox would only venture out to eat when the servants had left the room. As soon as she was finished, she dived back under the couch until the couch was removed. She then took refuge in the blanket box. 

Soon after breakfast she began sniffing around at corners. Norrington then picked her up and put her in the sandbox. The fox understood the nature of the sand instantly, which put Norrington in a far better mood than he’d been in since Jack Sparrow’s escape. 

Norrington went home for lunch and afternoon tea, which surprised his men. Unlike most commanders, the commodore had made a point to eat with his men at least once a day, even if it was only a bit of toast. 

"Brokenhearted," Murtogg commented. His opinion became the general consensus among the seamen and officers alike. 

As had happened during breakfast, the fox only came near Norrington to eat and then dashed back to her den. Nevertheless, the commodore was persistent. He ate breakfast and had tea in the parlor every day, each time bribing her into being near him with food. When it wasn’t mealtime he read, did paperwork, and entertained himself with puzzles or music, spending as much time in the fox’s company as possible. 

The commodore’s parlor stayed empty for the first two weeks, then the furniture and rugs were slowly reintroduced. The parlor stayed partitioned off by boards for the entire month. After that month, the fox was allowed to explore the house - an activity she had no inclination of participating in. However, by the end of the month the commodore was allowed close enough he was able to take a comb and scissors to her coat. He followed up the mat removal with a bath, drenching himself and ruining two rugs in the process. 

"Next time, sir," Jervis suggested, "perhaps it would be better if I did the bathing." 

"She won’t let you near her, Mr. Jervis," Norrington said patiently. Jervis snorted. 

"May I ask as to why this fox is so important, sir? I do not believe cleanliness is any factor in a fox’s skills in a fox hunt." 

"I intend to give her to the Turners as a wedding present," Norrington said, though the idea had just now occurred to him. He observed the pointed face regarding him from the box in the corner. "I believe they’ll find the pet quite appealing." 

"Of course, sir," Jervis said. When the butler left, Norrington walked over to the box and sat down next to it. 

"You’ve been here for over a month, pet, and I haven’t mistreated you. I believe I deserve a little good faith," Norrington said soothingly. He knew the fox couldn’t understand words, only the tone of voice, but he felt foolish making nonsense noises. He held his hand out to the fox, who poked her head out and sniffed his fingers. Norrington gently scratched her chin, and was rewarded when the fox stepped out of her den. He stroked the animal softly for several minutes before the fox climbed into the hallow created by his crossed legs. 

"Miss Swann is going to adore you," Norrington said. "She and Mr. Turner will give you a good home, as well." The fox stood and sniffed the commodore’s nose in reply.


	3. Ties That Bind

The next morning, Norrington resumed breakfasting in the dining room. However, he placed the fox’s dish next to his chair as usual. Soon, the fox regarded him from the doorway separating the parlor and dining room. 

"If you want to eat, pet, you’ll have to come in here," Norrington said. The fox didn’t move, save to jump back into her den when someone knocked on the door. Norrington put her dish of eggs, bacon and berries on the table as Jervis conducted the governor of Port Royal into the room. 

"Good morning, Governor Swann. Would you like to join me?" Norrington said formally, standing and gesturing to the table. 

"Oh, why thank you, Commodore," Swann said. A maid brought utensils for the older man, then served him. "I was coming to see how you were. I know Elizabeth’s choice made for a difficult month or so, but you seem to be pulling out all right." 

"Thank you for your concern, Governor Swann. I’m feeling quite well. And you? The wedding preparations must be dreadful." 

"They are. Elizabeth has no sense of what a girl of her station should have in a wedding. I say silk, she says linen. I suggest an orchestra, she suggests a few flutists. I suggest a few invitations, and she pares down the list as much as possible. And the boy is no help - he’s as stingy as if he would have to repay a loan on the wedding. As if I would stint my only daughter in any way! If she must marry a blacksmith, then she should wed in style," the Governor said with indulgent frustration. 

"Of course. Miss Swann deserves the best you can giver her, which is considerable." 

Swann accepted the compliment graciously. 

"You will come, won’t you? I would understand, of course, if it was too painful." 

"I wouldn’t miss it," Norrington said. He looked down at his plate, a smile playing at the corners of his lips. "Perhaps I should refrain. I don’t seem to be playing the part of the pining, heartbroken waif very well. I hate to disappoint everyone." 

"Well, you know how it is. Gossip is scarce this far from England. Weddings are good fodder for the rumor mill, but love triangles are better," Swann said, taking a bite of his eggs. "This is really quite delicious- my word, Norrington. There is a fox stealing your food." Norrington looked at the empty seat on his left, which was empty no longer. Her front paws resting delicately on the edge of the table, the fox was eating out of her dish. She watched the governor cautiously, but didn’t flee when he shooed at her. 

"Down, pet," Norrington said, picking up her dish and placing it on the floor. The fox gave him a reproachful look before jumping onto the floor. Swann raised his eyebrows questioningly. "She’s a maltreated fox I’ve been rehabilitating. When I first took her in, she wouldn’t come near me unless I had food in my hand. This is the first time she hasn’t hidden at the sight of another human." 

"I didn’t imagine you the type for taking in strays, Commodore. Aren’t you concerned that attachment to you will damage her evasion skills?" 

"No, I’m not," Norrington said. "I don’t intend to hunt her; she’s a pet." 

"Regrettable. It’s been years since I’ve participated in a decent foxhunt." 

"Indeed," Norrington said. "Perhaps one of her kits." A sharp sensation at his ankle drew Norrington’s attention. The fox had nipped him, and was now looking at him with a definite air of rebuke. Her tail-tip twitched once in irritation. Then, content her point had been made, the fox began to explore the room. The Commodore blinked in surprise. It was almost disconcerting how well the animal projected the illusion of understanding. 

"Is something wrong?" 

"No, not at all, Governor. As I was saying, if she breeds I’ll probably hunt her kits. If not, then you could have a fox imported on the next cargo shipment." 

"That’s true, but it seems almost extravagant, having a batch of animals shipped here just for my temporary pleasure." 

"Then ship only two, a male and a female." 

"Tempting, extraordinarily tempting," Swann commented. "However, Elizabeth doesn’t approve of fox hunting. She would be furious with me for weeks." 

"That could be dangerous," Norrington commented. A clatter sounded behind him. Both men turned, and a particularly large chunk of soot sneezed. The fox had walked along the edge of the grating and had fallen into the ash. The fox made a disconsolate sound. Norrington dashed to the fireplace and picked her up before she could track soot on his floor. 

"If you don’t want a bath, don’t get dirty," Norrington cautioned the fox, then excused himself from the governor’s presence. He called for a tub of water to be made ready. The water was placed on the kitchen floor, and after removing his uniform Norrington bathed the animal. The fox didn’t struggle as much as she had the first time. Regular brushing had eliminated any tangles, so the cleaning didn’t hurt. Afterward he dried the fox off and changed his now-gray breeches and shirt. 

"Why didn’t you have a servant clean the animal?" Swann asked when Norrington walked into the parlor adjusting his full sleeves. 

"I apologize for the wait, Governor. I thought you had already departed," he said, strapping on his blade and firearm. "Pet won’t let anyone else handle her." 

"You know, one of the ways to avoid being a pining heartbroken waif is by finding someone or something else to give affection to," Swann commented as the two men set out for the fort, "like a pet. Though I think a fox is a highly unusual animal to become attached to." 

"I am not attached, Governor. Pet is to be my gift to your daughter, and her future husband, for their marriage." 

"As you say, Commodore, but naming something is the first step toward attachment." 

"I haven’t named her." 

"Really? When you call ‘pet,’ does she come to you? And how often do you call the fox ‘pet’ in comparison with other epithets?" Swann asked with only a trace of smugness. Norrington didn’t respond. "I would start looking in for an alternate choice of gift, just in case you find you can’t part with the one you’ve already chosen." 

"Pet is a pet, not my pet," Norrington protested. 

"As you say, Commodore Norrington," Swann said. As there was no dignified way to reply, the Commodore stayed silent. 

Despite his words that morning, when Norrington came home that evening, he stood at the door and called, "Pet!" She came, sniffed his boots in greeting, and dropped a welcome home gift at his feet - the largest dead rat Norrington had ever seen. 

"Ridding my house of vermin. Thank you, Pet." 

Jervis then picked up the rat’s corpse and threw it in the trash. Pet’s tail drooped. 

"We don’t eat rodents, they’re very unsanitary," Norrington told her. The fox cocked her head, and then trotted from the room. 

"She’s been running around the home all day, sir," Jervis complained. "Poking in every nook and cranny, sniffing everything." 

"Good. She’s adjusting, Mr. Jervis. Though she still won’t let the staff handle her?" 

"No, sir. But she does not hide from us." 

"Progress, Mr. Jervis, is a slow process." 

"As you say, sir. Governor Swann sent you a letter, as did your mother and a Captain Worst." 

"I don’t know anyone named ‘Worst,’" Norrington said, taking the papers from Jervis. Governor Swann’s note was a receipt of RSVP - no one without a receipt would be allowed into the wedding. "If he’s trying to keep that Sparrow out, he’s going to fail miserably. A wanted pirate will not waltz in through the front door," Norrington said to Pet, who’d jumped up onto the back of the parlor couch. "Though this one is certainly fool enough to try. Mr. Jervis!" He called. The man appeared. "Please have a sandbox placed upstairs and have Pet’s den placed in my room. And put this on my desk," Norrington ordered, handing Jervis Swann’s receipt. 

He next opened the letter from his mother. 

"‘Greetings, my new Commodore-’" Norrington stopped and read the date. "Over a month ago, that explains it. ‘I’m very well.’" Norrington, tired from a day filled with combat drills, flopped down on the couch and propped his feet up on the footrest. Pet slid off the back of the couch and curled up next to him. "I should probably stop talking to you now that you’re used to me. On the other hand, you’re a very attentive listener." Pet gently bumped his ribs with her head. He took that as an indication to continue. 

"‘We’re very proud to hear of your promotion. Imagine! A commodore at thirty!’ Here it comes: ‘Now perhaps you can gain transfer back to England. We dearly miss you, and we wish you would return to civilization and stop gallivanting after pirates.’ Bringing murderers and rapists to justice, Mother. There’s no gallivanting involved. ‘Your sister has accepted Admiral Campbell’s proposal, she and her dashing new husband were married yesterday. I noticed your lack of congratulations.’ I only heard of the wedding now, how could I send congratulations? And I was rather busy being shot at by the undead at the time. ‘It’s a fine match. Your brother Marcus and his wife are expecting their third child in April, they’re hoping for a son.’ Sweet Mary, another monster. The best thing about not being home, Pet, is that I never have to nursemaid Peter’s children. All of my other nieces and nephews are wonderful children but his." 

"‘Eric and his wife are also expecting. The doctor says it’ll be twins. Marielle couldn’t be more happy; she’s so looking forward to having siblings. George and Annie just had their newest child this month: a son. They’ve named him James.’ Isn’t one person in the family being saddled with this name enough? ‘I know you’re honored.’ If by honored you mean pitying, Mother, then yes. ‘Your sister Lucy also had a son, on her one-year anniversary! Mark is ecstatic - he tells everyone who will listen that he’s a father, as if it’s unique. Lucy’s the same way.’ That’s good to hear. ‘Everyone else is also well save Matthew. His horse threw him while he was racing - again - and he broke his leg. But it’s mending, and he implores me to convey his greetings.’ Hello, Matthew. He’s my favorite nephew; very bright, friendly, full of energy," Norrington explained to Pet. The fox swished her tail. 

"‘With all these new relatives, you’ll simply have to come visit. And I notice my eldest has yet to give me any grandchildren.’ I was wondering when she’d get to that. ‘Not even married yet - you’re thirty, James. It’s time for you to settle down with a fine woman and raise a family.’ I tried, Mother. I was disregarded in favor of a pirate blacksmith. ‘If you keep hesitating, all of the fine matches will be gone, and you’ll have to settle for what’s left.’ And so on, and so on: I’ve heard and read it all before. Though this time she spent a full two pages on the subject. She must think I’m turning into a shrunken zombie with every passing minute. ‘And whatever happened to that lovely Swann girl you wrote so much about?’ Curses. I was hoping she’d forgotten." Pet sneezed, then lolled her tongue out of the side of her mouth. "If that’s laughter, you’re eating gruel tonight." Pet’s mouth closed. 

"‘In any case, James, I hope that you end up as happy as your family, and that you’ll come home. Love, Virginia Norrington.’ They say that behind every good man is a good woman," Norrington said, stroking Pet, "driving him deeper and deeper into the Caribbean with every pen stroke. I do love Mother, but I’d love her more if she didn’t unceasingly ram hearth and home down my throat." 

"Now, Captain Worst," Norrington said, opening the third letter. Pet sniffed it and wrinkled her snout. Norrington lifted the letter and smelled it. There was a faint hint of rum. With a sudden sense of nervousness, he read the first line. It was a letter of thanks from Jack Sparrow ending in a promise to return the favor someday. Norrington read the letter twice. A pirate had thanked him - the pirate hunter himself - for dereliction of duty. 

Sparrow had a long list of crimes, to be certain, but no murder. Nor rape. Nor torture. Just stealing, smuggling, and pretending to be what he wasn’t. As far as pirates went Sparrow was beyond tame, and he’d saved Elizabeth- Miss Swann and Mr. Turner. And not just to reclaim the _Pearl_ : Sparrow had had nothing to gain and everything to lose by jumping into the water to save the drowning Miss Swann. 

Sparrow was a pirate _and_ a good man. He was merely trying to display appropriate gratitude for what amounted to Norrington saving his life. With a sigh and a flick of his wrist, Norrington sent the paper flying into the fireplace. Swann had tacitly approved the man’s release, in any case.

"I was wrong, Pet. Mr. Sparrow isn’t the worst pirate I’ve ever seen. He is without doubt the most aggravating pirate I’ve ever seen." Pet licked his hand in a generally consoling way. 

While Pet was discontented by the shift in her den, she didn’t spend days hiding in it, either. However, she did hide two days later when loud booms sounded from the front door just after midnight. 

"Commodore! Commodore! Pirates are attacking Montego Bay!" Murtogg’s voice shouted. "Commodore!" 

"I’m already awake, Mr. Murtogg," Norrington called, opening the window. He had awakened at the first knock, and by the second he had pulled his breeches on. "Have the _Intrepid_ leave immediately, and have the _Dauntless_ loaded with the medical supplies and food for the survivors. Have her ready in ten minutes, Mr. Murtogg, not a second later." Norrington put on his vest, holster, and sword belt as he dashed downstairs. Jervis helped Norrington into his surcoat and handed him his hat. Norrington tied his cravat as he ran down the street, a skill developed during many such night-time awakenings. 

Norrington arrived at the dock precisely 8.25 minutes after waking, perfectly groomed save his flushed, unshaven cheeks. As every Navy man knew, a sudden awakening was no excuse for a slovenly appearance. He accepted a turnover filled with meat and vegetables from a crewman and quickly ate it while a lieutenant reported. 

"We don’t know the full situation, but the signal fires began burning at twenty-three fifty. There appears to be cannon fire from only one ship, but that’s by no means conclusive. The signal fires, however, stopped at twenty-four oh-five." 

"Not a good sign. Captain Black took the _Intrepid_ on ahead?" 

"Yes, Commodore." 

"Good. Groves, are we ready to depart?" 

"Yes, Commodore." 

"Then do so." Norrington raised his voice to be heard by the deck hands. "New men, don’t forget to eat - you’re no use to anyone if you faint." Norrington took a draft of water from a crewman with a dipper and bucket, then turned his attention to the map. "Knowing Black, the _Intrepid_ will have entered the bay here and made a direct assault. We will enter here and come around this way, flanking the _Intrepid_. We’ll be in position to pin the pirates if there’s one ship, to divide them if there are two ships." The deck lurched as the _Dauntless_ left the dock. 

"ETA five minutes, Commodore," Groves reported. "The wind is at our backs." 

"Excellent," Norrington said. "Run out the guns!" 

Five minutes later they arrived to find the _Intrepid_ sitting quite serenely at the docks. There wasn’t even a smell of gunpowder in the air. There was a welcoming committee on an empty dock, including a nearly purple-faced Captain Black. 

The _Dauntless_ pulled into port, threw out her lines, and lowered the gangplank. Norrington descended with Groves, Murtogg and Mullroy. 

"Report, Captain," Norrington ordered. 

"A Danish transport pulled in late, Commodore, and this… _person_ ," Black gestured furiously to the captain of the Montego Bay garrison, "panicked. He opened fire on the ship. The mayor concluded they were being attacked and lit the fires, sir." 

"Is this true, Captain Pierce?" Norrington asked icily. 

"Yes, Commodore. The flag-- well, it’s red. I-- I didn’t see the white. I thought the Blood Flag pirates had come." 

Most pirates flew some variant of the Jolly Roger, and when the target vessel resisted, ran up a solid red flag to indicate no quarter would be given. The Blood Flag band flew no other standard than the bloody red. They were the embodiment of all Norrington fought to stop: murderers, rapists, and torturers all. The captain’s panic was understandable. Not excusable, but understandable. 

"Captain, the Blood Flag do not sail quietly into the bay and make for the dock. They scream like banshees as they arrive, and begin shooting as soon as they are within range. Mr. Mullroy, get the captain here a copy of the ship recognition protocols - and see that he reads it. Black, convey me to the Danish ship. I have apologies to make." Black nodded and led the way. "Oh, and Captain Pierce?" Norrington said over his shoulder. "This is a warning. If you ever claim emergency, rouse me from bed, and bring two battle-ready ships of the fleet all the way from Port Royal for nothing more than a tardy passenger liner again, I will demote you to crewman so quickly that God himself won’t have time to update his records. Am I clear?" 

"Inescapably, Commodore." 

"Lead on, Black." 

The Danish captain was livid, shouting at the mayor in a combination of Danish, French, and Pidgin swearwords. A very well-to-do man stood beside him threatening war and trade embargoes. Norrington sighed. 

_"Pardonez-moi, messieurs. Je m’appelle Commodore Norrington. Est-ce que je peux vous aider?"_

The men responded by screaming at him in the amalgamation they had been bellowing in. 

_"En francias, si’l vous plait,_ " Norrington said politely. 

"I speak English, you filthy cur!" the well-to-do man spat, pushing the Danish captain aside. "What is the meaning of this atrocity?" 

"You are?" Norrington asked coolly, as if he had not been insulted. 

"Ferdinand Buchholtz, a merchant of no little esteem. I have powerful friends in Parliament, Commodore. I’ll have your commission for this!" 

"I’m certain. However, my business is with the captain of this vessel." Returning to French, the Commodore continued, " _this was an accident. The captain of this garrison mistook your merchant ensign for the Blood Flag standard. He acted accordingly. I apologize for the error, and assure you that the English Navy will cover the cost of your repairs._ " 

It was a mark of the Blood Flag’s savagery that the captain’s demeanor changed to one of conciliatory understanding. Or perhaps it was a mark of the pound’s strength. In any case, the situation was completely resolved in an hour, and the _Dauntless_ and _Intrepid_ returned to Port Royal. 

Norrington returned home at nearly two in the morning, his adrenaline rush long since faded. He crept silently up the stairs, toed off his shoes, and collapsed into bed. He had barely closed his eyes when a weight landed on his chest. Norrington opened one eye. 

"Hello, Pet. Miss me?" The fox sniffed his nose and face, then curled up in the space between his arm and his body. Norrington nodded absentmindedly and fell asleep. 

The following dawn brought a true emergency, a pirate raid on a small settlement partway between Dagmar and Port Royal. The _Intrepid_ left first, followed quickly by the supplies-laden _Dauntless_. The two ships followed the strategy that had been planned earlier that morning, dividing the two pirate ships and attacking one-on-one. The _Intrepid_ sank her opponent, while the _Dauntless_ ’s enemy used her sister ship for cover and escaped. Norrington and Black switched ships via grapple and the _Dauntless_ began to administer aid. 

The chase lasted one week and two storms before the Navy ship ran the pirates aground, captured the crew and reclaimed the booty. The _Intrepid_ returned to Port Royal and placed the pirates in the fort’s jail. The Governor was most pleased. 

Satisfied himself, the Commodore returned home. He found, not quiet, but a fox that was beside herself with worry. Norrington had never been away for more than a week before, and here he’d been away for two. Thus Pet concluded that Norrington had abandoned her. To survive, Pet had gone into hiding, ensuring that none of the staff would so much as catch a glimpse of her. The staff whereupon concluded that they had lost the commodore’s prize fox. The unfortunate duty of informing the commodore fell upon Jervis. 

"Welcome home, Commodore," Jervis said over-cheerfully, taking the Commodore’s coat. 

"Thank you, Mr. Jervis. Pet!" the Commodore said. "What have I missed?" 

"Oh, nothing of import. Mr. Turner stopped by. He seemed to hope you would be able to ‘talk sense into’ his wife, something about doves." 

"Tell him no. Wedding preparations are a torment for the family, and I am not family. Pet!" 

"And there is that," Jervis said nervously. 

"There is what?" Norrington said, his tone dropping from warm and tired to cold and tired. 

"Your fox, sir. She’s, well-" a joyful hehehehehehehehe interrupted the butler, and Pet pelted down the stairs. She didn’t even pause before streaking by Jervis and climbing up Norrington’s leg into his arm. She then proceeded to: sniff the commodore for injury; lick his face, hair and neck in profuse displays of affection; and make exceedingly undignified fox-laughter. "-been adapting marvelously," Jervis finished lamely. 

"Go into hiding, did you? I imagine you gave Mr. Jervis here quite a fright," Norrington said with more fondness than he’d ever admit. "But it’s nice to be missed." Norrington yawned fully, and when Pet licked his teeth he put her down. "I’m going to take a nap, Mr. Jervis." 

Pet, not being sleepy, set about scouring the home for the largest rodent she hadn’t killed already. The commodore’s return demanded a suitable welcome-home gift, that it did.


	4. Fever

Norrington found his welcoming gift by stepping on it. The Commodore made the appropriate sound of disgust any well-bred man would in that situation, then he picked the corpse up and threw it into the chamber pot. Pet looked deeply offended, and wouldn’t let him touch her the rest of the evening. By nightfall, though, she judged his suffering sufficient and slept next to him that night. 

Pet followed Norrington to the fort the next day. Try as he could, the Commodore could not make her leave. He ordered her home and was ignored. He threw her out and she sneaked back in. He punished her and she stayed just out of arm’s reach. After a week of such treatment, Norrington just put the fox on his shoulders so she wouldn’t be under foot. Pet found this a most satisfactory arrangement and over that next week learned to climb on and off Norrington’s shoulders without disturbing him. 

Most of Norrington’s men, once they adapted to the concept of a fox being anything other than prey, found the Commodore’s pet to be a perfect mascot. And Pet, once she adapted to the concept of human kindness outside of Norrington, found excellent allies. Her strongest ally was Murtogg, who fawned over her in a way most unbecoming a man of the King’s Navy. Murtogg taught the fox things that had never occurred to Norrington, like fetch, tag, hide-and-seek, and naughts-and-crosses. Murtogg initially wasn’t certain that Pet comprehended hide-and-seek and naughts-and-crosses, but she seemed to grasp the basics. She looked for him when he called, hid when he told her to, and sniffed at squares on the three-by-three grid. 

"I don’t know what’s sadder," Mullroy commented. "That you play with that fox or that sometimes she beats you." 

Pet left a token of her disdain on the man’s boot. She accepted Norrington’s scolding for it in a meek manner. 

"She’s not sorry for what she’s done, sir," Murtogg said. "She’s just sorry you’re upset by it." Pet swished her tail. Norrington looked from Murtogg to the fox and back again, his face carefully expressionless. 

"Mr. Murtogg, you do realize that Pet can’t actually understand anything you say? She only understands the tone of your voice and the fact you’re speaking to her." 

"I don’t know, sir. She beats me at naughts-and-crosses at least one out of three." 

Norrington stared at Murtogg for a long moment before putting Pet on his shoulders and walking away. 

"Where are they recruiting from these days?" Norrington asked Gillette, looking back at Murtogg, who was engaged in a heated debate with Mullroy over Pet’s cognitive skills. 

"I don’t know, sir. But if that’s the best they have, I never want to visit. Imagine a fox beating you at naughts-and-crosses." Pet snorted and hopped off Norrington’s shoulders. Norrington stared after her as she trotted away, sniffed at a haystack, jumped, and pined a mouse beneath her paws. 

"Does she seem more…" Norrington searched for a word to express what he was thinking, then settled lamely for, "aware… than other animals?" 

"Indeed, sir. If I didn’t know better, I’d play leagues with Mr. Murtogg," Gillette said wryly. Norrington nodded. 

"Come, Pet." Pet finished her mouse and followed him, after pausing to smell Gillette’s shoes. She decided against leaving a token of contempt on them. 

That evening, Pet interrupted Norrington’s reading of The Case of Reason by dropping a large nut at his feet and gently pawing his leg. Norrington looked down. Pet started back at him expectantly, then pawed again when he returned to his book. Norrington again examined his pet over the top of his book. Pet moved the seed an inch closer to him. 

"I am not playing that ridiculous game with you. What on Earth could possibly be the point of chasing a small object and bringing it back to me, only to have me throw it again?" Pet ran around the couch Norrington sat upon three times, then stopped again at the seed. "Running laps is exercise, designed to increase stamina," Norrington began, then stopped, rubbing the bridge of his nose. He was getting as bad as Murtogg, believing the animal’s actions had any intelligent purpose. 

Pet continued to look at Norrington expectantly, and when he didn’t pick up the nut, she resorted to the silent mew. Her mouth made the same movement as it did when she mewled, but no sound emerged. It was the ultimate form of felino-canine persuasion. Norrington sighed. 

"Very well, then. But just this once and not in the house," Norrington said, picking up the nut. Pet followed him happily out the door. The Commodore decided that while he couldn’t fathom why anyone would want to chase the projectile, throwing it was jolly good fun. He steadfastly refused to play hide-and-seek or naughts-and-crosses. After all, both games were far too complex for a canine. 

Though Pet accompanied Norrington to the fort, he refused to allow her to sail with him. Before leaving to board ship, the Commodore would lock Pet in either his office or his chambers. Granted, Pet could escape from both areas in less than twenty minutes, but by that time Norrington’s vessel was far out of reach. Pet found this a most disagreeable situation. She sulked for days while Norrington was gone, greeted him enthusiastically when he returned, and left him a large welcome-home gift in an unpleasant place. After the fifth such occurrence, the Commodore began double-checking doorways, shelves, drawers, and closets for rodent corpses for the first two days of his return to Port Royal. Pet still had the nerve to be offended when he threw her gifts away. 

"If you dislike it so," Jervis said for what he felt was the umpteenth time, "I recommend a good foxhunt. A few hounds would take care of her in no time." Norrington glared murderously as he threw out Pet’s latest token of fond discontent. 

Pet began leaving dead snakes in Jervis’s quarters. After the third time Jervis ran down the hall screaming like a small child, Norrington disciplined Pet. 

"This really must stop," Norrington told Pet firmly. "Now. You know the man is terribly phobic, and you’ve made your point." Norrington tapped her sharply on the nose to illustrate his point. Pet slunk away dejectedly, and ceased leaving tokens of disdain for Jervis. 

"I don’t like Mr. Jervis, either," Murtogg confided to Pet in an appropriately sympathetic manner that next morning after she’d performed one of the bizarre dances she did only for Murtogg. "Even for a butler, he’s a stiff." 

"Mr. Murtogg," Norrington said over-patiently, "once again I will remind you that Pet doesn’t understand human speech. She’s only a fox." How he’d heard about Jervis and the snakes was anyone’s guess. Why he felt the need to _talk_ about it was another question entirely.

"A fine fox she is, Commodore," Murtogg replied, smiling broadly and setting down the muzzle-loader he was cleaning. "But she and I communicate all right anyway." Norrington sighed and left the redcoat to his "conversation." Gillette walked up behind the Commodore and handed him a sheaf of cargo lists. 

"He was dropped in his head as a child," Gillette commented, looking askance at Norrington, who was scanning the papers. "It’s the only reason I can come up with why a grown man would still believe beasts can talk." 

"Lieutenant Gillette," Norrington said in a reproving manner belied by the smile that tugged at the corners of his mouth. "That is no way to talk about your crew mates." 

"Of course, sir. I think he’ll be announcing his engagement to that fox any day now. God knows she’s the only female alive who’d consider him, and he’d certainly win all the arguments. But I can’t say I fancy her cooking." 

"Gillette," Norrington said more firmly, or at least that was his intent. But his voice wavered slightly, and the effort it took to smother his smile made it look like he had a nervous tic. "That sort of talk is completely unbecoming to an officer and a gentleman." 

"I wonder what their children will look like," Gillette continued, observing his superior’s reaction. 

"Andrew!" Norrington gasped. "That is too far!" 

"You called me Andrew," Gillette said in quiet triumph. "I’ll get you laughing someday."

Norrington’s face settled into its usual expressionless lines. "You’re not going to pout," Gillette chided. Norrington raised his brows loftily. "Like master, like pet, sir. That’s where she gets it, you know." 

The Commodore signed the lists and returned them to Gillette. "All is in order, Lieutenant. Please convey these to the Quartermaster." 

"Of course, sir," Gillette said. 

The jesting stopped during the next pirate hunt when Norrington took a sword-stroke glancing across his ribs in defense of Gillette. While the gash itself wasn’t serious, the infection that took root during the return voyage was. On arrival, two crewman bundled the delirious Commodore into his home, conveying him to his bed and laying him out. Gillette followed behind, his tricorner hat twisted into a shapeless lump by his hands. The doctor pushed by the lieutenant. He applied leeches to the Commodore’s arm, barking orders to the servants. 

"Close the windows and the curtains! Bank the fire! A chill at this point could kill him." 

Murtogg caught Pet as she ran into the room. "Not now, Pet. The doctor’s saving your master, he mustn’t be disturbed." Pet made a sound of complete and utter distress as the doctor said, "give him as little fluid as possible, so he stops sweating. If we can bring his internal fluids back into balance, we still have a chance. And someone remove that animal!" 

A few hours later Pet tried to enter the Commodore’s room, but Jervis, emboldened by the doctor’s orders, locked Pet in the cellar. Pet immediately began searching for a way out, and two days later found one. She climbed up the coal chute when the shipment arrived. The fox bathed quickly in a nearby barrel, then climbed up the trellis to the Commodore’s bedchamber. The shutters were closed. With a snarl, Pet climbed back down and entered the kitchen, slipping past the maids. She dashed upstairs, jimmied the handle, and gained entry to the Commodore’s suite. 

She froze just short of the bedroom door - there was another human inside. Apparently Gillette had posted a man to oversee the Commodore’s condition while Gillette commanded the fort. Pet sniffed, but she couldn’t identify the man’s scent over the stench that filled the tiny room.

She trotted in anyway. 

"Pet!" Murtogg exclaimed. He looked pale and nauseous. Apparently the putrefaction that so assaulted Pet’s sensitive nose didn’t agree with him, either. "You’re not supposed to be in here!" Pet spared him only a glance, then jumped onto the bed. The Commodore had indeed stopped sweating; his lips were cracked and bleeding with thirst. Pet growled, then turned to Murtogg. He was drinking a glass of water to quench his own dryness in the hundred-degree room. Pet looked pleadingly from the glass to the Commodore and back to Murtogg. 

"I can’t," Murtogg protested. "The doctor said he was to have no more than a half-cup of broth a day." Pet continued to beg, whining with far more pathos than any animal should be able to show. After a few moments, Murtogg caved like a papier-mache box in the rain. "I suppose a glass won’t hurt." He poured a few drops first on the Commodore’s lips, wetting them. Then he poured a few drops into Norrington’s mouth. Slowly, sip by sip, barely conscious and not entirely aware, Norrington drank the glass of water. Pet thanked Murtogg profusely, then begged again in an hour. Murtogg yielded, giving the Commodore another glass while Pet removed the leeches from Norrington’s arm with her teeth. Murtogg protested and was again swayed by Pet’s pleas. 

After the third glass of water, Pet opened the window over the trellis and left. Murtogg closed the shutters behind her, and opened them to admit the fox a half-hour later. She carried a flask in her mouth. Murtogg took it and smelled it. 

"This is whiskey!" 

Pet nodded and ran under the covers. She soon pushed back the blankets covering Norrington and then began removing the bandages. They hadn’t been changed in a day, the smell was overpowering. 

"What are you doing?" Murtogg protested, but Pet just looked at him briefly and then went back to work, slowly peeling back the pus-filled bandaging. Murtogg gently moved her aside and pulled the bandages off himself. 

"This is madness," he commented as Pet retrieved the flask, "taking the word of a fox over a doctor. But he’s only gotten worse under the doctor’s care, I guess this can’t do any more damage." Pet yelped in agreement. Murtogg uncapped the flask and poured the purloined liquid onto the wound. Norrington’s jerked away and he made a sound of pain. Murtogg packed the old bandages between Norrington’s ribs and the bed, leaned forward with his forearm across the man’s clavicle, and poured nearly the entire flask into the wound. Then he pulled the old bandaging away, washed his hands at Pet’s insistence, then soaked the new bandaging in the alcohol and re-bandaged the leg. Pet was exceedingly grateful. 

When Murtogg’s replacement arrived, Pet hid under the bed. She stayed there for the next sixteen hours, only slipping out for food, water, and her sandbox. The officer never saw her, Pet made certain of that. When Murtogg returned at noon the next day, Pet was ready.

She dashed out of the window nearly as soon as he arrived. It took her less than twenty minutes to find strong enough alcohol. She dropped that off, then left again. It took her another twenty minutes to find meat in a sufficient stage of putrefaction. Though the taste made her drool and gag, she brought her prize back to the house.

“What am I supposed to do with this?” Murtogg asked. He’d already removed the leeches. Murtogg felt it immediately, pressure on every nerve as if he was partly in his body and partly without. The maggots could be put to work. He knew it even though he’d never known it before.

Murtogg yielded to the pressure, letting his hands do as they willed. They pulled away and discarded the old bandages. He watched himself carefully transfer the maggots from the meat to a shallow bowl and rinse them in – moonshine? Vodka? Murtogg wasn’t certain, but it was strong. Then at last he transferred them Commodore’s wound. He threw the old meat out the window and washed his hands. Pet brought three more maggot populations, each washed, moved over, and their old home discarded. Each maggot was carefully counted, though he had no idea why he wanted to. By the time they finished, the Commodore’s gash was a seething mass of larvae.

At the end of his watch, Murtogg carefully replaced the bandages as lightly as possible. He made the wrapping wider than it had been before to fully conceal what was below.

The next day he pulled the bandages back and removed the molts. On the third day, Doctor Wellington was disgusted to pull back the bandages to find the wound had sprouted maggots. Murtogg held the bowl as Wellington scraped the maggots away. They’d molted again. Once the Wellington left, Murtogg counted them: all accounted for. Murtogg didn’t know why that was so important, but it was progress. He had to admit the gash looked better, pink and red instead of black. Pet left and returned, this time with castor oil. Murtogg’s hands spread the oil on the wound, let it sit, then cleaned it with his own legally-purchased spirits.

Slowly, the Commodore made progress. But every inch of ground Murtogg and Pet gained was lost to the incompetent care of Murtogg’s replacements. As soon as Murtogg left, Norrington stopped being watered, the wound ceased being disinfected, and the castor oil poultice could not be applied -- to say nothing of another treatment of maggots. And worst of all, the leeches were put back on, draining Norrington of the blood he most desperately needed. After five days of seeing improvement only to lose it, Murtogg decided to take a gamble. 

"Look here, the doctor’s left new orders," Murtogg told his relief on the sixth day. "All this we’ve been doing is what conventional medicine says to do. And it’s not working. So the doctor’s trying something very new, but no one can no about it or else he’s ruined, see? So you follow his new orders, but don’t let Lieutenant Gillette or anyone else know about it. Not even the doctor himself, or he’ll have to stop what’s happening to save his reputation, do you understand?" 

"Yes," the crewman said. "Desperate times call for desperate measures. What needs to be done?" 

"Well, give the Commodore a glass of water every hour. There’ll be strong spirit of some sort here in this cupboard. Pour half a mugs’ worth on the wound. It’ll hurt, so you’ll have to hold him down. Then soak the new bandages in about as much again and bandage the wound. Make sure to wash your hands between steps. Pet will dispose of the old bandages. But keep the windows closed. And only put the leeches back on when Pet hears someone coming." 

"Understood," the man said. After all, who was he to question orders, even ones as bizarre as these? 

"Excellent. Convey the orders to your relief. And remember: no one is to know," Murtogg said with extra caution. He set Pet gently on the bed. Pet returned to her place next to Norrington. The look of gratitude she gave Murtogg was all the justification he needed. Personal honor meant less than a shining pair of small, dark eyes.

With consistently competent care, the Commodore began to improve. The process was painfully slow, there was simply too much bad medicine to make up for. And on the days the doctor spent the full day with Norrington there was too much ground lost. Hidden beneath the bed lest she be locked in the cellar again, Pet raged as the delirium returned. To make matters worse, Governor Swann visited, encouraging the doctor to stay longer. 

"I thought you said he’d stop sweating," Swann commented. 

"He should have. His fluids must be more out of balance than I thought. But I can’t completely take away all fluid from his diet. He needs the nourishment that half-cup of broth provides," the doctor said. "Perhaps if I remove more blood…" Pet bared her teeth."Though I’ve removed so much already… I could inadvertently tip the balance the other way, send him into chills instead." Wellington sighed. "He seems to respond, then the fever overtakes his brain again. I fear-- I fear there is nothing left to do but give him laudanum and keep him comfortable." 

“I-- I see.” Governor Swann rested a hand on the back of the chair beside him. “There is truly nothing left to-- to try, to do?”

"To be frank, Governor, you would best be looking into a new commodore." Pet opened her mouth in a fox grin. With the pseudo-doctor no longer meddling, she and Murtogg could work unimpeded. Pet closed her eyes, her tail swishing happily. 

Upon hearing Dr. Wellington had stopped administering to the Commodore, Murtogg volunteered to watch over him. Gillette agreed. He reassigned the other two men, taking the night watch for himself. During the day, Murtogg and Pet did indeed work unimpeded. They didn’t stop even for Elizabeth’s visit, telling her that the fox’s presence made Norrington comfortable and a dying man deserved what comfort he could be given. Elizabeth agreed. 

Will came to visit as well. He thought it the least he could do for the man who had taught him swordsman-ship, and had stepped aside even though Elizabeth had already promised to marry him. Will was there when the fever finally broke. The first thing the Commodore felt was Pet’s tongue bathing his face, his first sight was her anxious pointed face. 

"Hello, Pet," Norrington said, gathering the fox to his undamaged side and stroking her softly. "I imagine I gave you quite a fright." 

"All of us, Commodore. You gave all of us a fright. If it wasn’t for Mr. Murtogg here, you’d be dead," Will said, with his usual terrible earnestness. Norrington looked at Murtogg. 

"Well, er, doesn’t it say so in the Bible… to put wine on people’s wounds?" Murtogg stammered. "It was Pet’s idea, really." 

"Indeed it does say such, Mr. Murtogg. Apparently for good reason," Norrington said. "And once again, Pet is merely an animal. She can’t reason." 

"But she brought that first flask," Murtogg protested. "She wanted to put it on herself, before I realized what she was doing and helped." Norrington looked down at Pet, who’s eyes were closed in pleasure. 

"Cats predict earthquakes, otters use rocks as tools," Will said, holding his hand out for Pet to sniff before lightly rubbing a finger between her eyes, "perhaps a fox might know something of medicine: the same God that wrote the Bible made them all. Or maybe it’s a fairy tale. We’ve certainly had enough of those. It doesn’t matter. It was you, Mr. Murtogg, who kept administering aid even when everyone else had given up hope. Even Governor Swann. Even me." 

Murtogg’s mouth opened, silently for a few heartbeats. Then, "I-- should-- go get the Lieutenant. Mr. Gillette. He’ll want to know the Commodore’s awake." Murtogg rushed toward the door. 

"Mr. Murtogg!" Norrington called. Murtogg turned around, his hand on the doorknob. "What is your given name?" 

"Benjamin, Commodore." 

"Benjamin," the Commodore said with a smile, "you saved my life. I won’t forget." 

"You’re-- you’re very welcome, sir."


	5. Wedding Gift

Gillette’s arrival was announced by a surprised shout from Jervis as the overjoyed lieutenant ran into the house and up the stairs without knocking. Gillette   
knocked on Norrington’s bedroom door once before barging in. 

“Hello,” Norrington started to say, only to be interrupted by the most enthusiastic hug he’d ever received outside of his nephew Matthew. Norrington’s greeting turned into a shout of pain. Gillette released him immediately. 

Pet had leaped out of the way just in time, and surveyed the scene from the side of the bed with her head cocked. 

“It’s all right. I am fine, and I will be ship-shape in virtually no time,” Norrington said with a grimace as soon as he could breathe again. “Didn’t even take time to shave or put on your wig. Go into my dressing room and don’t come out until you’re not so obviously French.” He let out a long, slow breath and drew it back in again. 

Gillette did as he was bid, borrowing the Commodore’s razor to finish shaving. When he emerged from the dressing room he looked more like a member of the King’s Navy and less like a scruffy pirate. Gillette had remembered his hat for the run, however. Tearing down the streets with his striking red hair on full display was an activity Gillette would ever engage in no matter how exigent the circumstances. More was the pity. 

Gillette sat down next to the Commodore on the bed, his hands fiddling with said tricorner. The Commodore had gotten his breathing under control and had leaned back against his pillows.

“I am informed it was a very near miss,” Norrington said tightly. He was still pale and his eyes had a pinched look about the corners. 

“Yes, sir. Wellington had given up on you, and frankly, I was surprised when Mr. Murtogg volunteered for a death watch,” Gillette looked down as he said the last two words. 

“Hmm. Most ill people die at night, so I was surprised that you took the night shift of said watch. It was almost as if you wanted to be there when I died,” Norrington said, raising an eyebrow. Gillette blushed, looking away. “Thank you, Andrew.” 

“I’ll always be here-- James,” Gillette said glancing back to see Norrington’s reaction.

“Something for which I do not always express gratitude as I should,” Norrington said, his voice soft and slow. He closed his eyes. He was so damnably tired. “I must also thank you for allowing Mr. Murtogg to attend to me. He seems to have no little natural talent as a physician.” 

“Mr. Murtogg?! The same Murtogg what thinks Pet over here can think?” Gillette exclaimed, gesturing to the fox. Pet snorted. 

“The same. It was his ministrations that brought me through, or so Mr. Turner told me,” Norrington said. He stroked Pet’s thick fur. “Mr. Murtogg said Pet here was the one who first indicated pouring alcohol on an infected wound was wise. I believe he needs to work on his bluffing skills if he thinks blaming a fox is an effective way to dodge attention, though his modesty is most becoming.” A breeze gently ruffled his dark hair, sending two locks tumbling down over his left eye. 

“Indeed, sir,” Gillette said. “To tell you the truth, though, I’m not certain he believes his lying. He still persists that this beast can think. You can’t think, can you, you ugly little rodent?” Gillette asked Pet in a cheerful, fond tone. Pet bared her teeth and snapped at open air before stalking further up the mattress to curl up next to the Commodore’s shoulder. 

“It’s almost frightening the way she does that,” Norrington said. “I could almost dupe myself into believing she was honestly upset by what you said.” Norrington shook his head. “Please inform Captain Black that I would like a report on the status of the Fort and what has transpired during my incapacity as soon as he is able. He will have to remain landed at the Fort the next couple of weeks until I am well.” 

“Yes, Commodore,” Gillette said. He took his leave. 

Norrington dozed until Jervis awakened him for Captain Black’s arrival. Norrington listened to Black’s recitation of the largely routine matters which had transpired in the Commodore’s absence. Norrington tended to operate his ships two halves of a single crew, bouncing men between ships as necessary for maximum efficiency and fighting as a unit whenever practical. He relied on knowing which merchant activity in the area would present an attractive lure to ensure his ships were patrolling the correct waters at the right time. The method also served to discourage back-door smuggling. Captains who did not properly disclose their cargo ran the risk of not being Norrington’s priority when they needed to be. 

Though he obeyed his superior’s directives, Black was a traditionalist. He favored treating each ship as its own entity, sending the ships out individually on designated routes. The broad net approach required neither communication nor cooperation from the shipping sector, and neither did it require reviewing endless cargo manifests. 

There had been a skirmish one such divided patrol. The _Dauntless_ had interrupted a pirate ship attempting to commandeer a trading company slave transport. Norrington wasn’t surprised. Slave ships were fast with large cargo holds, they made attractive targets. Furthermore, the cargo inside could be sold for a tidy profit, pressed into service for the pirates, or -- rarely -- freed and allowed to join the pirate crews. The _Dauntless_ had recaptured the company ship and its cargo, though the attacking pirate vessel had escaped.

Norrington tiled his head. “What?”

“I said, we recaptured the ship and its cargo. We escorted her to her destination--”

“I heard you. I was merely surprised, that’s all. Gillette’s usual recommendation is to make capture of the attacking vessel the priority.” Gillette always argued that the attacking vessel would merely target another ship at an opportune time if it wasn’t eliminated, and therefore in the long term it was the greater threat. Norrington privately suspected it had as much if not more to do with the fact the trading company would lose both ship and income whether the pirates freed the slaves, took them, or if the cargo in question was able successfully rebel against the smaller occupying pirate force.

“I cannot speak to what Mr. Gillette recommended, sir,” Black said, shifting to a more formal stance.

Norrington’s eyes narrowed. Black held his silence.

“And why not?” Norrington asked even though he knew what the answer was as much as Black did. 

“It wasn’t relevant,” Black said, dodging the question. He was looking straight ahead at a point above Norrington’s head.

“Lieutenant Gillette is the First Lieutenant. He should be the acting captain, not Mr. Groves,” Norrington stated.

“Permission to speak freely?” Black asked. Norrington nodded. “As you are aware, I disagreed with your decision to allow Mr. Gillette to advance to Lieutenant in the first place. I will admit he has proven himself a model of temperance and capable of an unusual degree of discipline for his kind. However, the acting captain would have become captain upon your demise. Mr. Gillette is an able servant, but he is not fit for command of a ship. Lieutenant Groves is.”

“I have always found Mr. Gillette’s observations to be sound,” Norrington said, enumerating his points on his fingers. “His tactical recommendations have served me in good stead on many occasions. He enforces the Articles of War fairly and consistently among the men. His watches proceed in an orderly and well-disciplined fashion.”

“As I said, Mr. Gillette is an able servant.” Black’s jaw was tight, his voice strained with the effort of maintaining a respectful tone. “But no matter how elevated his speech or how much he pretends he is merely French, the fact remains that he was born and raised an Irish papist. He is short-tempered, sarcastic, and given to grudge-holding. There will come a time when his temper leads him to rash action that, if unchecked, will doom his crew. Or there will simply come a time where he will not follow orders. Mark my words.”

“Consider them marked,” Norrington said briskly.

“Commodore, I understand that you are quite fond of the man,” Black carried on. “He has a certain... low charisma. But no matter how you intend to force the world to be as you would will it, the fact remains that no English ship will ever take orders from an Irishman. Nor should they. You’ve done him no favors by giving him ideas above his station.”

“That is too bold, Captain,” Norrington said, a dangerous purr to his vowels.

“I apologize, sir,” Black said. He returned to looking at the wall over Norrington’s head. “Will you countermand my orders?”

Norrington was sorely tempted. But it would not do to win the battle only to lose the war.

“No, I will not undermine your authority so in front of the men,” he said instead. “You have given Lieutenant Groves the chance to prove himself capable. I will not deny him that. However, should such an opportunity arise again, consider it an order that you are to give Lieutenant Gillette that same chance. He surprised you once before. I believe he will do so again. You are dismissed.”

Black saluted and left. Norrington settled back down and again closed his eyes. Pet watched the door, the tip of her tail twitching lightly.

Despite Norrington’s confidence, it took him several weeks to heal enough to walk without support, and two weeks more to return to his usual strength and stamina. Pet was with him constantly during the entire recovery period, even when being off the active duty roster made him decidedly unpleasant to be around. Having to stay home while his ship and crew faced danger did not please the Commodore in the least. All things considered, no one could tell who was happier when the Commodore was allowed to return to full, active duty: Norrington or everyone around him. 

The Commodore’s return to duty did have one drawback - Norrington now had no excuse to not attend the Swann-Turner wedding. Whereas six months ago attending the wedding had seemed the perfect way to prove he wasn’t a brooding waif… now it seemed like a masochistic display. Then it had seemed like he had nearly moved past Elizabeth… now he wasn’t certain he hadn’t been deluding himself. And he couldn’t pretend that seeing Elizabeth marry another wouldn’t hurt. 

“I did everything right, Pet,” he told the fox who sat on the side of his bathtub, idly splashing one paw in the water. “And I lost anyway. To a pirate no less!” Pet splashed water at Norrington. 

“I guess it’s asking to much of you to understand. You’re only a fox.” In response, Pet butted her head against him affectionately. “I’m going to miss you, Pet. I do hope you’ll be as much a joy to Miss Swann.” Pet laid down on the tub’s edge and yawned, fully declaring her intention to stay right where she was. She fetched Norrington’s towel when he finished bathing, making Jervis frown deeply at her. 

“Lovely day, sir,” Jervis said with a grin, turning to Norrington. “I’m certain the Turners will adore their beautiful gift.” The butler was ecstatic that the awful silver vermin was leaving the Norrington house for good. The Commodore sighed, this time in impatience as he dried off. 

“Yes, Pet is leaving, Mr. Jervis,” Norrington said. “You have brought that to my attention seventeen times this morning. Eighteen and I will no longer summon my butler by ‘Mr. Jervis.’” 

“Of course, Commodore,” Jervis said. He helped the Commodore dress in silence, straightening and tucking with skilled hands. After the Commodore was completely groomed, Pet trotted into the room carrying in her mouth a perfect red rose. Norrington accepted the gift, tucking it into his lapel. He then picked Pet up and set her inside a small wooden box, closing and latching the lid.

Norrington left for the wedding, carrying the box. Jervis grinned as he closed the door behind his employer. 

Norrington walked down cobblestone streets in a quick but dignified manner. He hoped to arrive, place his gift on the pile, and take his seat before he ran out of nerve. He failed miserably. Half way to the church he stopped and opened the box. _I’m just checking on her_ , he told himself. _That’s it._ Pet looked back out at him, yawning. She hopped out of the box, ran lightly up his arm and took her customary place on his shoulders. 

It was foolish. 

It was emotional. 

It was uncontrolled. 

It was everything he strove not to be, but nevertheless he couldn’t force himself to put Pet back in the box and keep going. He tried, but his arms wouldn’t move and his mouth wouldn’t form the order. He felt the gentle touch of Pet’s damp nose as she sniffed his cheek and wig, and in an almost-reflexive response he scratched behind her ears. Pet licked his fingers in response. Norrington sighed, hanging his head in defeat. He had invested too much time, money, and emotion in the little dogling to send her away now. 

“Come on, Pet,” Norrington said, ducking into a little antique shop on his right. “Help me find a gift.” He looked around the shop, which was crammed full of shelves stacked nearly to the point of collapse with junk and treasure. He scanned the shop briefly, ever conscious of his minutes slipping away. He had finally settled on a necklace which was slightly inappropriate for an ex-suitor to give, when a clatter grabbed his attention. Pet returned to him with an object in her mouth. The Commodore took the object and examined it. It was a lady’s fan, oriental by the look of it, but it was heavier than a fan of that size should be. 

“That’s a shoo-koo-sen, the little chap called it, Commodore,” the proprietor said. “A lady fan. The ribs are steel and very sharp; it could cut a tent pole in two like sausage. It’s designed so a lady will always have a means of defense even when she can’t carry a weapon.” Norrington looked down at Pet in shock. It was the perfect gift for Elizabeth Swann; both feminine and battle-worthy, like the woman herself. 

He still had nothing for Will, but he was out of time.

“I’ll take it,” Norrington said. He purchased a handkerchief from a vendor down the road, wrapped the fan hastily but neatly, dumped the box, and commanded Pet to go home. He had to run to make it to the church on time. He slid into his seat just a few minutes before the ceremony began. The man next to him, a well-dressed merchant, glared. The Commodore smiled politely, all too aware of his flushed cheeks, and turned his attention to the pulpit. He struggled to keep his breathing soft and regular. 

The wedding was grand, with white roses and ribbons decorating the church. There were about one hundred guests, roughly a third of what Governor Swann had wanted to invite. There was a sharp contrast between the groom’s side of the pews, made up of laborers and craftsmen, and the bride’s side, which was filled with wealthy socialites. Everyone, regardless of class, was dressed in their best, however modest that was. Norrington noted that Mr. Brown, Will’s old master, was even sober for the occasion. 

Norrington scanned the groom’s guests for any pirates. He couldn’t see any, but he knew they were there. Jack Sparrow would not miss Will and Elizabeth’s wedding. Norrington sighed. Gillette had wanted to post soldiers at the wedding to arrest any pirates who came, and the Commodore had overruled him.

“That pair is going to be the end of me,” Norrington muttered. This was the third breach of duty he’d made on their behalf. If anyone found out, his death was assured.

“First you are late and now you talk to yourself,” said the polished merchant on his left. “You are without doubt the rudest wedding guest I have ever heard of.” Norrington turned slowly to look at his seating companion, looking past the clothes to the man behind them. The black beard was neatly combed, the dark hair neatly tucked under a wig, and the distinctive accent disguised - but the flash of gold in his mouth gave him away. The rich merchant was Jack Sparrow, and Norrington hadn’t noticed until Sparrow had seen fit to reveal himself. 

That hurt. 

“But you have heard of me,” Norrington said curtly. “And if you misbehave in any form or fashion-” 

“Don’t you worry, love,” Jack said, “I’m on me best behavior. It’s Elizabeth and Will’s wedding, after all. What do you take me for?” The pirate patted Norrington’s knee in a reassuring way. Norrington fixed Jack with his most potent glare. “Right. No touching. My apologies,” Jack said, with his signature half-bow with his hands clasped as if in prayer. Norrington gritted his teeth and counted to ten before responding.

“If you must call me by a ludicrous epithet, could you at least use the male form?” 

“With a face like that? You’re a love; no mate could ever manage such a glare.” Jack winked at him, grinning roguishly. Only Norrington’s determination to give a trouble-free wedding to Will kept Norrington from having Jack clapped in irons. That, and the fact the processional music began. 

Norrington faced front and stonily ignored the man next to him. Will, scanning the guests nervously, nearly fell off the platform when he saw what seat Jack had chosen. _Is he out of his mind_? Will thought in panic, then remembered who it was he though of. 

Then the appearance of his bride relegated all other matters to unimportance. 

Norrington was surprised that the sight of Elizabeth in her splendid satin and lace gown didn’t quench his irritation with Sparrow immediately. Nor did the exchange of vows drive all other things from his mind. It was rather like feeling a sting where one expected a bone-wrenching ache. It seemed he hadn’t deluded himself at all. His unyielding nature had yielded in this. 

“I still want to you know,” Jack whispered as the groom kissed the bride, draping his wrist over the Commodore’s shoulder. “I really was rooting for you.” 

“If you are not out of Port Royal fifteen minutes after the bride and groom return home,” Norrington said, shoving Sparrow’s wrist aside with two fingers, “I will clap you in irons and hang you at dawn before anyone, even the new Mrs. Turner, can intervene. Do I make myself clear?” 

“Inescapably, Commodore.” 

Norrington clenched his teeth. 

“That’s a very bad habit. Completely unbecoming a man of your station,” Jack chided. Norrington reverted to his plan of completely ignoring Jack Sparrow, and followed the crowd to the reception area. 

The wedding reception was exquisite, everything Governor Swann had campaigned for. The circle of trees which held the banquet was streamed with ribbons and flowers, the tables covered in white linen tablecloths edged in lace. Delicious hors d’oeuvres were circulated on silver platters by crisply dressed servants. The guests mingled happily, drinking champagne and wine. In most cases the classes kept to their own company, though a few brave ambassadors crossed the invisible gold line that separated them. 

Norrington tried very hard to keep to his own class, but Jack would have none of it. For a reason the Commodore couldn’t fathom, whenever the pirate wasn’t speaking with his friends, he came to bother Norrington. The pirate seemed incapable of respecting Norrington’s personal space and keeping his hands to himself. 

After the endless gaggle of socialites had satisfied their curiosity about the Commodore’s emotional state, and while Sparrow was talking with Elizabeth, Gillette took the brief opportunity to ascertain what had made his commander a few moments shy of late. 

“I had to find and purchase a gift,” Norrington explained softly when Gillette questioned him. Both men watched as the high-society guests began the minuet. Those Turner guests that weren’t making a point of ignoring the Swann guests looked appropriately appreciative. 

“I thought you were giving her Pet,” Gillette said. “Is the fox ill?” 

“No, Pet is very well. Giving her to Mrs. Turner was implausible, that is all.” Norrington frowned as the rich and old Mrs. Rochester edged a little closer to the Lieutenant and Commodore, obviously trying to be surreptitious about eavesdropping. 

“Couldn’t part with her, sir?” Gillette asked with only a trace of smugness. Norrington gave Gillette a dirty look, but did not reply. Gillette smirked, then glanced at Mrs. Rochester, who had been joined by Mrs. Lancaster, Mrs. Eyre, and the particularly short-tempered Mr. Kurtz. “Not them again,” he muttered. 

“Be polite, Gillette,” Norrington cautioned. 

“Why?” the Lieutenant demanded. “They practically set up camp outside your bedroom trying to catch me leaving it. It’s a smear to your reputation and honor, to think that you would do anything illegal.” 

“Don’t forget ‘morally reprehensible,’” Norrington said wryly. Gillette flushed. “If I tried to please everyone, I would end up barricading myself in my office and putting a flintlock to my temple. The gossips don’t like my policies and since they can’t fire me, they attempt to assassinate my reputation. They are petty and small and unworthy of your attention.” Mrs. Lancaster gasped, her fluttering fan picking up the pace. 

After the socializing, the guests gathered for the gift-opening. The couple picked gifts off the table, opening them in no particular order. The new couple showed appropriate appreciation for each gift, even when Elizabeth was given a book on etiquette and ladylike behavior by Mrs. Rochester. Norrington’s gift was the last opened. The wedding guests perked up, eager to see what the jilted suitor would give. 

“It’s beautiful,” Elizabeth gasped as the fan tumbled into her lap. “And heavy.” 

“It is a lady fan,” Norrington explained formally. “The ribs are steel and sharp at the tips. The fan is designed so that a lady is never without a means of self-defense. I thought you would require it, given your past history.” The guests laughed nervously, noting the lack of gift for the groom. “And to you, Mr. Turner, I gave a wedding that does not necessitate any hangings tomorrow.” Norrington hadn’t intended sparing Sparrow as a gift, merely a courtesy. The lie – which would be interpreted by the guests as referring to the security provided at Swann’s insistence, not the well-dressed man sitting at his side – served him in good stead: Will grinned. 

“Thank you, Commodore. It’s the best gift you could have given me.” The guests relaxed with no little disappointment. There was to be no quarrel, Mr. Turner was truly grateful for his gift. As the guests stood, a series of snarls and growls caught their attention. Everyone looked to see Jervis walking up the aisle carrying a hat box that appeared to be jumping in his hands trying to free itself. The butler sported many scratches and bites, and his bundle was tied, not with string, but rope. 

“I apologize, sir,” Jervis said formally, “but the fox escaped from the box you put her in and came home. Your gift, sir and lady.” The butler handed the unhappy box to the new Mrs. Turner and walked away. Norrington closed his eyes. 

“Commodore?” Mrs. Turner asked, raising her eyebrows. 

“My first concept of a wedding gift,” Norrington explained. He took back the box, knowing what was going to be inside. “I realized that it was unsuitable. However, I do not believe Mr. Jervis fully understood.” Norrington undid the rope and opened the lid. Pet launched out of the hat box, shrilly and loudly hehehehing imprecations. In no uncertain terms she registered her discontent with being chased around the house, pinned in a corner, unceremoniously shoved in a dark box, trapped inside said stuffy container, and being carried rather roughly across town only to be deposited in the hands of a stranger like so much refuse. Afterward, Pet silenced and lashed her tail angrily, staring up at Norrington as if expecting a suitable explanation. 

“She’s adorable,” Elizabeth cooed, bending down to get a closer look at the odd gray-and-black fox. “Now calm down, little thing, you’re fine now, lovely.” She offered her hand to the animal. Pet snarled and snapped at her. Elizabeth jerked her hand away, just seconds faster than the click of Pet’s teeth. 

“Pet! No!” Norrington scolded her, spanking her once, loudly rather than hard. He then picked the fox up. Pet stopped snarling, but her ears stayed back. “I apologize. I chose another gift for this reason. You should not have seen her.” 

“Understandable,” Mrs. Turner commented, rubbing the hand that had so narrowly escaped being bitten. “But then again wild animals do make poor pets.” Norrington summoned Gillette with a wave of his hand to take Pet away. Elizabeth brightened and turned to bid the guests welcome to the wedding banquet that would be held twenty minutes hence at the long tables to one side. The guests rose and began making their way across the room. 

“We meet again, Lieutenant Gillette,” Elizabeth said politely when he approached. “Have you seen any mermaids lately?” The remark was of course a reference to Gillette’s mistaken dismissal of Elizabeth’s warning that Barbossa’s crew could not be killed. During and after their return to Port Royal, Elizabeth had taken great pleasure in rubbing Gillette’s nose in his error. 

“I have as much chance of seeing a mermaid as you do a unicorn, Mrs. Turner,” Gillette said with equal politeness, taking Pet from Norrington. 

“Andrew!” Norrington barked as softly as he could manage. Elizabeth’s eyes narrowed in well-bred fury without her smile faltering in the least. “Apologize this instant.” 

“I meant that neither of us would be encountering any fairy-tale creatures any time soon,” Gillette said with utter civility. “I apologize for any ulterior meaning you may have found and taken offense to in my words.” 

“And I accept your apology in the spirit it was meant,” Elizabeth said with cold lightness. “Good day, Mr. Gillette.” Norrington escorted Gillette to a private spot in the trees, well out of the party’s earshot. 

“Explanation,” Norrington ordered. “You have been as rude as proper behavior allows to Elizabeth for a year and a half now, most especially since the _Black Pearl_ debacle. Why? Keep in mind that if I do not find your explanation of matters satisfactory I will have you tied to the rigging and flogged for such discourteous, un-gentlemanly behavior.” Gillette paled, but stood his ground. 

“I do not find Mrs. Turner in any way agreeable. Previous to what you so aptly called the _Black Pearl_ debacle, she knew you loved her yet gave no sign of disinterest. She let you embarrass yourself by making a proposal she knew she would refuse. Then she agreed to marry you if you saved Mr. Turner: using your love for her to manipulate you into shirking your duty by saving someone who was essentially a criminal. And then, suddenly and publicly, no less, she as much as said she would rather have died with Turner than live with you.” Gillette was talking very quickly and passionately, barely managing to keep his voice down. It was as if the dam had broken, and everything Gillette had ever wanted to say about the subject came pouring out. 

“No matter what you did for her, no matter what kind of risks you took on her behalf, she never once spared you so much as a,” Gillette’s voice and manner changed to a cruel but very accurate imitation of Elizabeth, “‘thank you for saving my life, Commodore.’ She went on and on about how wonderful Will Turner was for risking his life and committing piracy to save her, never mind that you mobilized _tout la fichu marine britannique!_ ” 

Norrington’s mouth opened in surprise. Gillette almost never swore. He said that cursing was the last resort of a man with no vocabulary. Gillette continued in his mother tongue, too furious to speak clearly in his second language. 

“ _We lost twenty-seven men saving her skin. You could have been killed by a zombie, you let that Sparrow escape - don’t think I don’t know what you did – and not a word of gratitude for any of that, either. She treated you as if you were some kind of, of, servant, to serve and be dismissed on a whim! And she has never once apologized._ ” Gillette paused, panting. “You may stand for being treated like dirt under her feet, but I will not.” 

“I’m sorry, Andrew,” Norrington said after a long stretch of time. “I didn’t realize it bothered you so.” Rather than fight through the crowd, Norrington led Gillette out through the forest. Gillette didn’t say much on the way back to the town. He’d pretty much exhausted most of what he wanted to say to the Commodore. Norrington was also silent, considering his reply. 

“Though I don’t condone your behavior,” the Commodore finally said as they drew near Gillette’s small, rented, but elegant home, “I understand the reason behind it. I appreciate the sentiment, Andrew, if you are a bit overzealous.” 

“You don’t take good enough care of yourself, James. I have to be overzealous just to fill in the blanks,” Gillette said, pausing at the door. 

“Yes, well… you’re a good friend.” Norrington paused, a smile playing with the corners of his mouth. “And without doubt the snarkiest little bastard I have ever met.” 

“I learned from the best. I know ‘Iron Bastard’ and ‘Iron Guts’ are taken by yourself, but with a little work I should at least rate ‘Iron Son-of-a-Gun, don’t you think?” Gillette said. 

Norrington couldn’t help it. He laughed, the rich and melodious sound filling the narrow Port Royal streets.


	6. Epiphany

The following day, Elizabeth Turner came to visit Norrington shortly before afternoon tea. Will did not come with her. What she had to say was for Norrington’s ears alone. 

"Good day, Mrs. Turner," Norrington said, standing when she entered the room. 

"Good day, Commodore," Elizabeth said. "I realize it is somewhat forward of me, coming alone to your home the day after my wedding. However, what I have to say is of a most private and significant nature." 

"Of course. I am at your disposal," Norrington said. "Won’t you take a seat?" Elizabeth sat, Norrington pushing in her chair. Elizabeth smoothed her brocade skirts as Norrington sat across from her at the small oak table. A maid brought tea for the both of them. Pet jumped into Norrington’s lap, flashing her needle-sharp teeth at Elizabeth in warning. 

"Who are you having to tea today?" Elizabeth asked politely as the maid distributed cups, saucers, and spoons. 

"Miss Baptistine Myriel, the second daughter of the barrister Myriel," Norrington said. "She’s only a few years your senior." 

"You have my sympathy," Elizabeth said. "I have shared many teas with Miss Myriel. She is… fluttery." 

"Vapid, vacant, and vivacious?" Norrington suggested. 

"Exactly." 

"Of all my duties as Commodore, afternoon tea is the one I truly despise. I would almost rather lose a limb," Norrington said with a wry smile. "But surely your matter both private and significant was not my social schedule. Has Mr. Sparrow gotten himself in another tight spot, perhaps?" 

"Most likely he has," Elizabeth said, sipping her tea. "But that is not why I am here. I came here to discuss what Mr. Gillette said yesterday. I overheard his-- soliloquy." 

"Ah. Well. Gillette believes that I do not show enough attention to myself and my own well-being. So he tends to be overzealous in what he sees as my protection and care. Pet as well," Norrington remarked, stroking the fox in his lap. "Gillette has somehow trained her to fetch him if I am neglecting myself - his standards, not mine." 

"You have so many protectors," Elizabeth said with a smile. "But I did not come here to berate Mr. Gillette or ask for his commission. I came to say that he is, upon reflection, absolutely correct. I have treated you abominably, both six months ago and now." Elizabeth paused, picking up her cup before putting it down. When Norrington opened his mouth to accept her apology, Elizabeth raised her hand. "I’m not finished. I feel I owe you an explanation. Please don’t interrupt or try to stop me, I won’t be able to enjoy my trip to Pennsylvania colony until I know I’ve made peace with you, at least. Somehow I don’t imagine Mr. Gillette with ever forgive me no matter how I explain." 

"No. He is his mother’s son, in this at least," Norrington said, not certain he wanted to hear what was coming. 

"When you proposed to me, and even before," Elizabeth began, staring at the tea instead of Norrington, "I thought your only desire was for a fine woman. That is to say, I thought you wanted to marry me because I was the governor’s daughter. I knew you cared for me on some level, I’ve known you since I was young, after all. But I didn’t think there was any passion to you. To your feelings, I mean," Elizabeth said quickly, softening the statement. "So when I made my promise to marry you, I thought you were a good man but a loveless one. When Will stood before you defending Jack, I realized that I could no more betray my heart than he could. I couldn’t bear being married to a man who didn’t love me. So I broke my promise to you." Elizabeth paused again, and when she spoke it was barely above a whisper. 

"You seemed to take it so well… you stood aside so calmly, you looked so upbeat when you told your men to give Jack a day’s head start. I didn’t know my refusal hurt you, I didn’t think it meant anything… I didn’t think you could be pained. That was my mistake. I’m sorry." 

"I accept your apology," Norrington said gently. "A commander cannot seem vulnerable in the eyes of his crew. As a civilian, it would be easy for you to confuse the act of saving face for genuine nonchalance." 

"Oh." There was a long silence. "I meant what I said, that day on the _Dauntless_. Not the part about it being a request rather than a condition, obviously, but-- you are a fine man. I hope that someday you find the happiness you seek." 

"Thank you, Mrs. Turner," Norrington said, standing and walking Elizabeth to the door. "It was pleasant speaking with you. I hope that we will be associates, if not friends." 

"Friends," Elizabeth said firmly. "You’ve given my husband and I far too much to be anything else. Good day, Commodore Norrington." 

Elizabeth then took her leave. Norrington closed the door behind her and then closed his eyes. He could hear Jervis clearing and resetting the parlor. _I didn’t think there was any passion to you._ The remark stung like nettles under his skin. It had doubtless been the reason Turner had commandeered the _Interceptor_ rather than return to Norrington with whatever intelligence he had garnered from speaking to Sparrow in his cell.

He had counted them both as friends. He still did, which only made the remark burn more deeply.

The knocking at his door could only be the Myriels. Norrington switched places with Jervis, returning to the parlor while his butler received his guests.

"Good day, Mrs. Myriel, Miss Myriel," Norrington said politely, his eyes slate gray and his voice like still water. Miss Myriel giggled when Norrington pushed in her chair, fluttering her pink silk fan. Mrs. Myriel did not giggle, but sat with self-important dignity. 

"Good day, Commodore. Thank you for your gracious invitation," Mrs. Myriel said stolidly. She arranged her stiff, gaudily embroidered skirts around her in a suitably graceful drape. 

"Yes, thank you," Baptistine Myriel said breathlessly. "You have a beautiful home. I just love the faux pauvre decorating." Norrington looked around his parlor, decorated with medieval blades above the polished mahogany fireplace, the rich oak flooring, the gothic wall sconces, and the subdued rug that was, in fact, a map of England. While the wood-paneled walls and dark green curtains gave the room a homey, den-like feel the decor was in no way poor, even falsely so. 

"You are too kind," Norrington said simply rather than make any attempt to correct his guest. He sat in the third chair. A maid began the tea service itself.

"I saw a carriage leaving as we arrived. Who was here before us, if I may be so bold?" Mrs. Myriel asked. 

"The Turners,” Norrington lied. “They came to thank me for the wedding gifts.” 

"It’s such a beautiful fan," Baptistine said, again fluttering her fan. "Though too bad it was red." 

"The red is disguise; hiding the crimson tarnish of lady’s defense," Norrington said softly, stirring his tea to dissolve the sugar. At sea he drank it unadorned. He could not countenance taking up precious supply room on such a luxury for his own use.

He’d rather be drinking it unadorned, now, on the quarterdeck. He’d take the sound of the rigging and the scrape of holy stones, the coarse conversation of sailors, over this. 

"That was an odd turn of phrase you had just now,” Mrs. Myriel stated. “Are you feeling quite well?" 

"Quite," Norrington lied. It would be rude to claim malaise. He did not have the familiarity with the Myriels he did with Governor Swann, who was largely amused by Norrington’s eccentricities. 

"What you said was very pretty," Baptistine said, gazing at the commodore with rapt eyes. "Like a poem, almost. Could you repeat it?" 

"No, I don’t believe I could," Norrington said. He couldn’t exactly remember what he’d said – nor could he exactly bring himself to be upset by it. 

"Nor should you. Such talk is highly inappropriate, even for a blooded soldier such as yourself," Mrs. Myriel said stiffly. 

"It wasn’t about anything wrong, just disguise and defense," Baptistine said. Norrington closed his eyes and sighed softly. "Wasn’t it? What did you mean, Commodore?" 

"I merely meant that the color of the fabric was designed so that any stains the fan would receive in serving its function wouldn’t show. The fan wears a mask; no one at first glance can see what its purpose is," Norrington said. In that, the fan was a metaphor for himself. For all his manners and the accouterments of his station, underneath he was military. A military man was a killer, at the heart of it. A killer with purpose, a killer for country, true, but a killer all the same. 

He doubted the formidable Mrs. Myriel nor her daughter noticed or cared, as Elizabeth had not seen. And who was he to blame her? Who knew how many blood stains the vermilion fabric he’d given to the new Mrs. Turner had held? He didn’t, no one did. The mask was too well-placed, too complete. 

"You’re too serious and philosophical. You should laugh more, smile some," Baptistine said. Mrs. Myriel had raised a proper young lady, her mind free from the taint of anything resembling serious thought. 

"Joy is a rare thing; fleeting and evanescent - only sorrow lasts," Norrington said, not unkindly, as looked at her with gray eyes which had turned too old for a thirty year-old’s face. Baptistine didn’t know to flinch from that gaze. Entranced like a glanconer’s maid, she could not look away. Her ever-fluttering fan stilled in her hand, and she could find no words within her starved soul to free it. 

At last it was Norrington who broke eye contact, looking down at the feel of a small paw on his calf. Pet looked up at him. "Rest your heart in this; though men may look without sight, beasts see with their hearts," Norrington murmured. So Elizabeth had seen him as emotionless. So the women at his table saw nothing but his title. So people saw the fan and not the sharp prongs. Why should their blindness cause him regret? It was their throats that would be cut in the end, not his. Pet understood. Gillette understood. And his men followed him loyally, even if they didn’t understand him completely. That was enough. 

For any man. 

"If you will excuse me, Commodore, I am afraid we have another engagement,” Mrs. Myriel said firmly, standing. “I must apologize for the hasty departure. Good day." 

Norrington showed his guests out before putting together a small bag and leaving himself. The Myriels’ early departure had left a gap in his schedule. He hadn’t had an unscheduled afternoon in -- it felt like years. It very well may have been.

Norrington meandered slowly through the city. He observed the citizens instead of the street, watching and listening to the lives he was sworn to protect as if behind a mirror. The people glanced at him as he passed by, seeing nothing more than the uniform. They saw the mask of the rigid commodore, and doubtless agreed that Elizabeth Swann had been very wise not to marry that chunk of stone. For the first time in a long while, it didn’t bother him. He merely kept walking with his fox on his shoulders. 

The smell of sea brine grew stronger as Norrington drew closer to the fort, but rather than following the road up to the battlements he cut sideways, down along the narrow ridge beneath the Fort’s walls. Just past the rocks below the bell arch – the very rocks Elizabeth had missed in her swooning fall – the ridge wound around the Fort to face the open sea. It dipped close to the water at its terminus. The tide was low, so there was a gap between the lip of stone and the water below. At high tide, you could walk right in. 

Even after all these years, the sheer expanse of sea to horizon took his breath away. The sea was calm today, the benevolent bearer of fish and trade. Her dark face was dormant, destructive power sleeping beneath the surface. It would not sleep forever.

Norrington shed his uniform and jumped off the lip. The water was a sharp slap of cold after the heat of day. Norrington let his momentum push him into as deep as he could go, listening to the sound of the water gurgling in his ears. He arched his spine, making for the surface. He surfaced just long enough to draw breath, then dived below again. By the time he surfaced again, close to the sheer rockface upon which the main body of the fort was built, he no longer felt the cold of the water. Norrington pushed off the stone. He touched bottom with both hands, lungs burning, wishing he could grow gills and never have to surface again. 

Then he pushed off. He gasped for air when his head broke the surface. Norrington turned in the water, floating on his back as he breathed. 

He’d been spending too damn much time on on land, there was nothing else for it. Peacetime politics was a black morass of vipers: greed and artifice and competing interests, whispers in the dark. Life aboard ship was so much simpler. Each watch giving way to another, every interaction governed by the discipline of the service. There was only one thing demanded of him at sea: victory. 

Norrington turned in the water again, taking a long lap toward the edge of where the fort’s walls hid him from the view of the bay and then swimming back again to his ledge. He knew all the slave markets, the market ports, the fences, and the pirate towns of the Caribbean. Port Royal had been such a town. But he could not have the enemy at his back, and so he’d systematically enforced every trade levy and stamp law on the books until the city had simply become too hostile an environment. He’d let the other carousing towns remain.

They were bait. They worked. Charting the pirate vessel’s likely course to their inevitable destination, finding the path through wind and current to intercept and come up behind them, to have them in sight just when they’d thought they’d escaped--

Norrington reached his wall and dove again. He was _good_ at it. There were only a handful of pirate bands left. The Caribbean brethren were nearly gone. Once he finished them off and cleaned out the last few remaining safe havens, that would be the end of piracy in the Caribbean.

And then what? The Navy did not retain detachments for no reason. If he was not sent to the Pacific, he’d be landed. Retired. Sent ashore as refuse no longer required. He could get a ship by signing on with one of the trading companies, he supposed. They knew who he was and what he was, that he could bring a ship home safely. But ferrying cargo was not the same as a Navy vessel. And it would mean parting ways with Gillette. All the trading companies dealt in slaves. Gillette would never consent. Not even for James.

Norrington dove again. He wasn’t sure if he could live like that indefinitely, but he was certain he couldn’t live like the past few days forever. Again Norrington surfaced. He’d give Sparrow another two days to get out of Port Royal’s waters, then he’d borrow Black’s methods take the ships out on patrol. There wasn’t anything of particular value on any of the lists, but it was only a waste of Naval resources if they _didn’t_ find something.


	7. Origin

Norrington’s good spirits evaporated in the morning when he awoke to the knowledge he had behaved abominably. The Commodore pressed his fists against his eyes, wishing that if he thought hard enough he could make yesterday a dream. Seeing that he couldn’t, he rose and wrote a letter of apology to Mrs. Myriel and her daughter. 

His letter written, Norrington collapsed back onto the bed, staring at the ceiling. What on earth had possessed him not to claim a headache and send the women away? Elizabeth’s revelation that she’d thought him incapable of emotion had stunned him. Yet he had let the women remain _and_ he’d continued letting them talk about the bloody fan, even though it had only contributed to his distress. Norrington let out a sharp bark of laughter at his unintended pun. 

What was it about the Turners that they could so disorganize his life? 

Pet jumped onto his chest and licked his face, decidedly concerned by her master’s odd behavior. Norrington stroked the fox, burying his fingertips in her silver-black fur. 

"It was like a sort of possession," Norrington said softly. "Am I going mad, Pet?" The fox shook her head in reply. Norrington smiled wanly. "Well, in any case I’m as sane as Mr. Murtogg. That’s not much comfort." Pet snorted and hopped down off the bed. With a sigh, Norrington prepared for his day, hoping whatever lunatic feeling had struck yesterday would keep its peace today. 

Upon arrival at Fort Charles, Pet hopped off Norrington’s shoulders and sought out Murtogg. Pet shadowed her friend during his duties, then sat next to him in the grass during his break for tea. She then told him yesterday’s events and that of that morning, along with her conclusion. After consideration Murtogg replied to the fox’s concerns. 

"It does seem like he can hear you, doesn’t it? Between thinking what you wanted to tell him and using Japanese poetry conventions in conversation… yes, I would definitely say he hears you as well as I did when we first started talking." Murtogg sipped his tea, then poured more for Pet. "But he’s really not taking it as well." 

Pet’s tail snapped in frustration, her nose dipping to the ground and back up. 

"That’s true. If he’s going to think he’s mad, you’d best not speak to him for a while. Though you can’t blame him. Whatever magic there was virtually disappeared a century ago. People stopped believing in spirits and spells. Remember when I told you about Barbossa’s men? Neither Lieutenant Gillette nor the Commodore believed the _Black Pearl_ even existed until it shot at us. And they certainly didn’t believe the curse until a pack of undead skeletons started slitting mens’ throats." Pet snorted. 

"It’s easier to believe in something that’s trying to kill you. Something tangible. Until he hears words from you, he’ll never believe that a talking fox is anything but a child’s fancy. No one will… except fools like me." Pet whined and laid a paw on his leg, then butted her head against his ribs. "Don’t worry, I’m used to it. You don’t laugh, that’s enough for me," Murtogg said gently.

After a while, he spoke again. 

"I feel sorry for you, though. The only way Norrington will speak with you is if he hears words. And the only way for him to hear words is to practice speaking with you. It’s a vicious loop. Hopefully he’ll open his mind enough to try." He looked down at the fox with a fond smile. "But somehow I doubt it." Pet snorted and growled. 

"Tis the nature of the beast. We’re told from the day we learn to read that anything beautiful it a lie, and that anything enchanting is a child’s dream that is unworthy of a man. For those who let such lies bind them, it’s very hard to see clearly again," Murtogg said. Pet curled up in his lap. "No, I don’t imagine it is easy," Murtogg said softly. 

"Hey, Benjamin!" a raucous voice called. "Benjamin, we need your help!" 

"Clarence White," Murtogg sighed. Pet snarled. 

"Benjamin, aren’t you going to say good afternoon?" Clarence, a medium-sized man with green eyes and a full mouth, said with cruel joviality. He was built like an ox, broad and strong, with square features that would be handsome if they weren’t lined in scorn. With him were four other redcoats. "Or have you forgotten how to speak English in all your fox talk?" 

"Good afternoon, Mr. White," Murtogg said wearily. "What is it you need?" 

"Well, we caught his monkey here," Clarence held up a wood cage for Murtogg’s inspection. The four men behind him snickered. The small monkey inside was furious, banging on the cage bars and baring yellow, pointed teeth. His shrill screams filled the small clearing. "And we wanted to know what he was saying. Seeing that you talk to foxes, we thought you could enlighten us. Please, Benjamin? We’re ever so curious." 

Murtogg sighed. The monkey was just an animal. The creature didn’t have the ghostly outline of a woman surrounding him that surrounded Pet. 

"On pure speculation," Murtogg said with sarcasm learned from and worthy of Gillette, "I’d say he wants to get away from you." Clarence’s eyes narrowed. 

"You better watch yourself, Benjamin. My father is a rich merchant with powerful friends. Yours is just a farmer." 

"As you say, Mr. White," Murtogg sighed. He regretted his earlier remark. Now Clarence would feel the need to avenge the bruise. Murtogg knew he’d never make an officer, even if he could afford to buy the commission. He could make the occasional sarcastic remark, but he was never cold-blooded enough to follow through. And it didn’t help he was a terrible strategist. 

"What, you’re just going to take that?" one of the other men said. He was a whip-like, almost reptilian soldier named LeHah. "Some soldier you are." 

"Yeah, all the fight of a woman," another said. Clarence grinned. 

"That’s not a wig you’re wearing, is it, Benjamin? I wonder what’s under that uniform of yours," Clarence said. He reached for the front of Murtogg’s coat. Fast as lightning, Pet tore a chunk out of his hand and spat it at his feet. Clarence howled in pain, cradling the bleeding appendage. 

"Bloody animal!" He raised his good hand to strike, then stopped. Hitting the Commodore’s prize fox was not a good way to further your career. So he lashed out at Murtogg instead. Murtogg ducked, and Pet struck again. "You watch yourself, Benjamin. Sometime that animal won’t be here to protect you!" The redcoats moved away. 

"I appreciate your trying to help, Pet," Murtogg said softly while Pet cleaned her bloody muzzle on the grass. "But you’ve only gotten me in more trouble. Now they’ll be out for blood." Pet stared at him, her tail whipping in anger. "And what good would getting into a brawl do? It would get me into hot water with the Master-at-arms, and put on bread-and-water rations. But Clarence would still be there, and even angrier." Pet snarled. "Fighting is something you do to protect those who can’t defend themselves. I challenge pirates and enemy soldiers, not my allies." 

Pet sat tall, flourishing her tail. "Thank you, Pet. I appreciate it. But also keep in mind you won’t get flogged for brawling - I will if I’m caught." Pet blinked. "It’s not as easy as that." Pet sighed, her ears drooping slightly. Murtogg smiled. "Sometimes I wish the same thing. Well, to be more exact, whenever Clarence White and his cronies are around." 

"You know," a voice said behind Murtogg, "there’s a simple way to get rid of Clarence." Mullroy walked up to his friend, who was packing away his tea cups and equipment. "Stop talking to this fox like she understands- where did this blood come from?" 

"Pet took a bite out of Clarence. She seemed to feel that I was threatened by his attempt to rip my clothes off," Murtogg responded. "I would say she’s a smart lady." 

"Rip your- you don’t mean-" Mullroy sputtered. "Ashore? In daylight? To a seventeen-year marine?" 

"No, not that. He was mocking me, saying I am actually a woman," Murtogg said matter-of-factly. He began walking back to Fort Charles, and Mullroy followed. "Which is stupid because there isn’t enough privacy aboard ship for anyone to pull off that sort of deception for seventeen years." 

"That’s not a very effective retort." 

"I didn’t say it," Murtogg said. "Pet had the floor and I didn’t want to interrupt." 

"Again with the fox!" Mullroy shouted, grabbing Murtogg by the shoulders. "Honestly, Benjamin, she’s just an animal. She can’t talk, she can’t reason, she doesn’t have emotions! She’s a beast, nothing more. And if you keep talking to her like she’s human, you’ll never make anything but a common grunt. People are already saying you’re touched in the head. I even heard Lieutenant Gillette say you’d been dropped as a child, and the Commodore agreed with him. Grow up, man, and stop believing in fairy tales for your own sake." Murtogg shook his friend off. 

"The _Black Pearl_ existed, and it was crewed by the damned. Captain Sparrow knew where the _Pearl_ was headed and why. And if we’d followed his plan like I suggested, we would have been on the _Dauntless_ and ready for Barbossa’s men instead of rushing back with our trousers down. Did it ever occur to you that I could be right about Pet?" 

"Even if you are, there’s no way to prove it. And you’re sacrificing your chance at command for a brute, even if she can talk, which I by no means believe," Mullroy said. 

"If I’m unhappy as a common grunt, why would I enjoy being an uncommon one?" Murtogg said. It was an old argument. "I can’t even watch the hangings, why should I put myself in a spot to have to attend them regularly?" 

"Privilege. Station. Pretty, fine girls worth marrying. Being free of Clarence’s troubles," Mullroy said. "An extra five bob to send home each month." 

"More killing and more people making sure you shoot to kill. Some things aren’t worth the money, not even for my family, Peter. I can’t leave for the deserter’s penalty or the press, so I might as well find what joy I can in conversation with a witty and brave lady. Even if she does have pointed ears and a tail," Murtogg said bitterly. Pet yelped softly, pressing against Murtogg as he walked. 

"You could find joy in your rum ration and still work your way to an appointment." 

"Rum leaves me empty when it goes. Pet always leaves something behind," Murtogg said. 

"She’s a fox." 

"She is. And she’s a lady, too." 

"Am I ever going to convince you to at least pretend you’re normal?" Mullroy asked in frustration. 

"No." 

Mullroy let out a sound half sigh and half growl. 

"What have you been doing with your rum anyway, since you haven’t been drinking it?" 

"Saving it. If it worked on the Commodore’s infection it would probably work again, though not as effective as something stronger," Murtogg said. "I enjoyed doctoring the Commodore, it’s one of the very few parts of duty I liked. It was something I could do, something I could fight without having to remind myself that Crown-sanctioned blood on your hands doesn’t stain. I wish I’d had the money to be a doctor. I think I would have been happy." 

"Wishes and dreams won’t keep your sisters in shoes and dresses. And they won’t keep your mother from loosing the farm. Shooting pirates will," Mullroy said, not unkindly. "You need to pull your head out of the clouds and live in reality." 

"Better the clouds than the sand, Peter," Murtogg said as they entered the fort’s gate. 

Norrington’s patrol did find pirates, a two-decker flanking a merchant ship and robbing her blind just inside Fort Charles waters. The ship didn’t have anything of particular value on board. The most likely explanation was an ambush. Norrington went ahead the speedy _Intrepid_ and had the _Dauntless_ follow behind, keeping out of sight until the second wave of pirates showed itself.

The plan worked brilliantly save for one thing - there was a third ship. The merchant ship escaped in the fray. 

The five ships churned the sea into a froth, sails and orders snapping in the wind. Cannon smoke turned a clear day into fog, cannon fire forming a thunder without lightning. The screams of the dying were a travesty of rain’s patter. In the midst of the storm, the _Intrepid_ immobilized one pirate ship by suddenly dropping anchor and raking the pirate ship with her bowsprit, then savaging her with cannons at point-blank range. A chain shot destroyed the third pirate ship’s mast. And as Norrington planned, while trying to avoid collision the pirate vessel crashed herself on the underwater rocks. 

One threat eliminated, the _Intrepid_ paused to retract its anchor before shifting sail and slowly turning to the less maneuverable _Dauntless_ , which was being pounded from both sides. Norrington took the smaller ship on the left, going to broadsides with it. The smaller vessel broke off from the _Dauntless_ , trying to beat windward to catch the _Intrepid_. The _Intrepid_ turned again, and fired upon the oncoming ship. The Navy ship shuddered and bucked beneath the Commodore’s feet, warning him that another such tactic would earn him a breach at best. 

And the pirate captain knew it. The smaller vessel drew up close to the _Intrepid_ and boarded, dividing the Navy men’s efforts. They now had a battle on board as well as off. Norrington drew his pistol and joined the melange of pirates and redcoats, directing cannons, muskets, and swords with bellowed orders. All too soon his pristine uniform was stained with blood - some his, most pirate. The deck was slick with it in places, the bodies of the dead fighting on as obstacles to the living. 

One such pool claimed the Commodore, sending him pitching down the poop deck stairs to roll, dazed and windless, onto the main deck. Norrington looked up helplessly as a pirate, the captain if his hat was any indicator, stood above him. He wished the man would stop running around him at a blinding speed. It was making him dizzy. 

"They’ll sing songs about me in Tortuga. I’ll be remembered forever as the man who killed Commodore James Norrington," the man said, aiming his pistol. A streak of silver soared above him, and the pirate jerked oddly. A line of hot fire ignited on the Commodore’s right temple, but the ship didn’t stop spinning (so the man wasn’t running after all). 

Two black eyes appeared above him, and stayed there until the ship stopped spinning and his breath returned. Norrington sat up, groaning, and touched the back of his head. His wig was missing, his head hurt dully at the back and sharply in other places. His scalp was wet in several places. Norrington looked at his fingers. They were red. "I think I knocked my head a bit, Pet." He paused. "You’re supposed to be locked in my office." Pet looked at the pirate, then back at him.

The pirate captain’s throat was missing, and Pet’s jaws were bloody. Pet trotted over, retrieved the captain’s pistol, and handed it to Norrington. The Commodore stood slowly, looking for his sword. It was gone, dropped somewhere in his tumble down the stairs. The Commodore stole the pirate’s blade. After all, he didn’t seem to need it and Norrington did. He’d have to look for his own after the battle.

The Commodore lurched back into battle, Pet at his side. Those pirates she didn’t outright kill she hamstrung, working in tandem with her master. Norrington splashed water on his face to further clear his foggy mind, not realizing that the water had been bled in. The pirates, faced with a blood-drenched Commodore wielding their captain’s sword and aided by a silver, bloodied fox, decided that no reward or glory was worth this. The broke and ran, retreating to the ships that could still sail and making full speed away. 

"Commodore!" Gillette said, rushing to Norrington and urging him to sit on the stairs. "Thank God it’s over and you’re alive. I’ll get you to a doctor immediately-" 

"No," Norrington croaked. "They’re not escaping the hangman save through the reaper. We follow them." 

"But sir, we barely managed to fight them off as it is-" 

"They used civilians as bait and my men as ladder-rungs to get to me. Signal the _Dauntless_ and give chase, Lieutenant. That’s an order," Norrington snarled, forcing himself to his feet and up the stairs, still clutching the pirate captain’s blade. "If they want to face me, those bloody devils will." 

Gillette did as commanded, and the two Navy ships bore down on their prey. The _Intrepid_ outdistanced the pirates and turned inward, slower than before, forming a quarter-turned barrier of wood and flying lead. The _Dauntless_ came up behind, a man o’war with crimson decks and a crew of vengeance. Captain Black’s crew aimed low, battering the enemy vessel’s rudder assembly. The first vessel collided with the second. The second vessel listed dangerously as the wind and impact pushed it forward and to the side. 

The pirates surrendered, and Pet let out a piping call of victory that was echoed by the crew’s resounding cheers. 

After that, Pet became her master’s constant companion in battle. Examination of prisoners and corpses showed that she had nearly as many kills to her name as her master. She took wounds as the other soldiers did, and healed only to fight again. Those pirates that survived and escaped carried stories away with them of the pirate-hunter’s new ally. 

Some said the fox was trained like a war dog. Others whispered darker things, for when the fox was aboard the Commodore fought with even greater fierceness and cunning. An angel of God, they said, a demon, or a revenant. Only one thing was known, the old seamen told those who gathered around the fire to hear their tales, that those who sailed beneath the dancing black flag were well-served not to cross the Fox Commodore, for chances were high that it would be their last voyage if they did. 

And as tales do, one legend soon reached the ears of another.


	8. Christmas Songs

The Lobo Blanco wasn’t the sort of place the illustrious Captain Jack Sparrow usually frequented. It was a solid little tavern in a stolid little fishing town that had nothing to recommend it beyond a moderately sheltered cove. Any port in a storm, as the saying went. It was true as much for the crew as it was for the ship. There were two other vessels besides Jack’s weathering themselves. Four of the musically-inclined townsfolk had braved the sheeting rain to set themselves up by the hearth to entertain the crews. Jack Sparrow sat at the edge of the audience, his hat pulled down over his eyes and a mug of rum in his hand. He wasn’t paying much attention to the song, a Spanish romantic ballad. His drink was more interesting to him than the fate of a highwayman’s mistress. 

Other things were also of interest, like Commodore Norrington’s replacement, the man called the Fox Commodore. Sparrow hadn’t run into him yet, but it was only a matter of time before he did. From what he’d heard, the man was as skilled and devoted as Norrington had been, but with more flair. Enough flair to earn a sobriquet, enough flair to cut in on Jack’s fame. 

But that wasn’t Jack’s main concern. The primary concern of the _Black Pearl_ ’s captain was a question he couldn’t find the answer to no matter how he looked. Why had Norrington been replaced? The Commodore had seemed healthy enough at the wedding, so it was improbable he’d died of illness. And Jack would’ve heard by now if he’d been killed in battle - no pirate who’d killed Norrington would have been able to keep from bragging. A promotion, perhaps? That seemed unlikely, not so soon after Norrington’s promotion to commodore. His being disrated also seemed unlikely. Desertion was even more unlikely. Transfer? That seemed the most probable - certainly a rising star like Norrington could’ve earned enough attention to be sent home. But somehow, it had seemed to Jack that the good Commodore had loved the Caribbean as much as he. 

Where had his partner in their private game of cat-and-mouse gone? 

The quartet began another song, one that Jack ignored until the final two lines of the first verse: "Fox Commodore." Then he began to pay attention. Perhaps a song about the man would tell how he’d come to power.

_"Above all else he hated, pirates he abhorred  
without mercy he hunted them wherever they’d board.  
But he wasn’t a thing of lore,  
for he was only a normal commodore."_

Nothing about Norrington. Bloody hell. Jack was ready to abandon the song, when the next verse offered an interesting possibility.

_"Then came a fox to his care, neglected and ill.  
He kept her and doctored her, to his empty heart fill.  
Soon she was of his heart the core;  
he was starting to be the Fox Commodore."_

That was something he hadn’t considered. He’d thought Norrington too stiff to ever carry a familiar. Could he have changed, adopted some of Jack’s flamboyant style?

_"The fox slow learned to trust him, to love and mind him.  
Day or night, whatever he did, there she would find him.  
As she did so his will grew more;  
he began to be called the Fox Commodore."_

He’d said it himself; the Fox Commodore was as good as Norrington had been.

_"His hunt for pirates became unbending and fierce,  
no shaft of regret or mercy his heart could pierce.  
By him like a weapon he bore,  
the creature that made him the Fox Commodore!"_

That little fox in the box at the wedding could have been a pet, not a failed gift. The nonchalant attitude Norrington had displayed toward the creature could have been a means of saving face. Lord knew the upper crust would do anything to deny they had feelings.

_"No bribes could sway him; no threats, no weapons he feared.  
None could hide from, none could flee him when their justice neared.  
Dauntless creatures linked evermore;  
man and fox united, the Fox Commodore."_

That definitely matched Norrington, except for the "none could flee him." What was the _Black Pearl_ , chopped chum?

_"Beware, those who sail the seas for death and plunder,  
for the hangman is waiting in four eyes like thunder:  
never was a warrior of yore  
more swift and sure than this, the Fox Commodore!"_

That sealed it. Jack had only met one man with eyes the color of the sea right before the first roll of thunder. The _Pearl_ ’s captain grinned. So Norrington hadn’t been replaced, merely become as much a legend as his prey.

Jack lifted his drink to his lips. Once the rain cleared, there was really only one thing to do.   
~*~

Norrington sighed and rested his head against the window pane. Today was the day before Christmas, tonight would be Mrs. Ashton’s Christmas Eve party, and unless pirates sailed into the port and started shooting, the Commodore had to attend. He couldn’t even expect a reprieve from Gillette or Murtogg as they had been invited, as well. Even Pet had been invited. He had been utterly outflanked. 

Norrington supposed he wouldn’t hate social events so much if he could just speak with the Governor, the menfolk, and Elizabeth. But he rarely got the chance. The marriageable women’s mothers saw the chance to match their daughter with a wealthy commodore, and the daughters saw the chance to marry a young, handsome man and still gain the status of a commodore’s wife. Even when he was a captain, the social routine had been the same: the young lady would approach and try to engage him in conversation; the mother would take up a secondary position both ensuring his attention and making certain no other socialites interfered; the young lady would try her wiles. Some of them had taken to trying to impress him with their knowledge of unladylike topics in imitation of Elizabeth. 

Norrington shuddered. He especially hated the latter. He’d pulled at least five muscles last year trying not to scream when the young Miss Washington had said, "why don’t you just have all your men go on deck during battle? If the pirates are shooting at your hull, then the men would be safe there." Worse had been the elder Miss Ashton’s comment, "I really think that the line method of fighting is very effective against pirates, don’t you? I mean, they’re not very smart." Every midshipman in the Caribbean knew that pirates were exceptionally tricky and that sitting like ducks in a row was the worst thing to do when fighting them. The pirates merely broke your line and harried the rear ship while the lead ship tried to beat windward. 

The worst lubber advice had come from Miss Lancaster after he’d been shot by Cedric the Red, "I don’t see why you need to fight, anyway. You’d be much safer in your office. Let your men do the fighting." He’d actually lost his temper then. The only thing his angry soliloquy about the duties of a commander to his men had gained him was a demand for an apology from Mr. Lancaster.

"The virtue of man has declined, Pet," Norrington said to his fox, who sat on his dresser playing with his cravat. Pet yawned, turning her ears back. She nosed the cravat towards him and blinked. The Commodore scratched her ears fondly, finished dressing and walked to Fort Charles.

When he arrived he found the fort nearly empty. Pet loped out of the fort and to the docks, where the lion’s share of his men stood on the _Dauntless_ ’s deck. The fox trotted up the gangplank and took up position next to Gillette, her tongue lolling out of her mouth in what was unmistakable enjoyment. 

"Lieutenant, why are all these men standing on deck instead of at their posts?" Norrington asked crisply. Gillette grinned. 

"We’re having a ceremony, sir. An early Christmas present, if you will." 

"Without my clearance." 

"Then it wouldn’t have been a surprise, Commodore," Captain Black said. "We knew that if you knew you wouldn’t approve. Well, you’d approve but you wouldn’t condone it. So now you can say you didn’t know and that it was all our doing." 

"Did what?" Norrington demanded. Pet made her laughing bark. 

"Quite right," Gillette said, and signaled the drummers to begin. They played the march, and Murtogg and Mullroy opened the doors to the commodore’s office. With full ceremony, an honor guard marched out carrying a wood box. The guard marched across the deck to the pole that held the British flag, opened the box, attached the flag contained within, and raised it. The sea breeze caught the flag and snapped it, revealing the flag’s device: a silver crossed gavel and noose beneath a silver fox, all on a black field. It was an obvious mockery of a pirate flag. 

Norrington stared up at the flag that now hung beneath the royal banner. 

"We all chipped in, Commodore," Gillette said. "We’ve even spares for when this one gets damaged." Norrington kept staring, his throat working, unable to speak. After some moments he managed to say, "thank you," his voice rough. 

The men cheered, the Fox Commodore’s colors waving in the stirred air. Gillette threw an arm around the Commodore’s shoulders, leaning close to be heard in the noise. 

"Makes the Ashton affair seem more bearable, doesn’t it?" 

And it did. Two hours into the party that looked like it would never end, the thought of his crew’s gift brought an invisible smile to his lips and a lift to his spirits. Even when trapped in conversation with the hostess’s only unmarried daughter, the thought cheered him. 

"Champagne, Commodore?" the girl offered for the umpteenth time that night. The plan was obviously to get him drunk and then into a compromising situation. Mrs. Ashton had used the strategy before. 

"No, thank you, Miss Ashton," Norrington said politely for the umpteenth time, and then tried a different refusal. "I don’t drink spirits." He gestured to the cup of hot apple cider in his hand. "This is all the drink I care for, if you please." 

"Whyever not? ‘Wine that maketh the heart of mortal man rejoice,’" Miss Ashton said, blinking in disappointment. Her thin, paper lips compressed in a frown. She looked more like a man than a woman, and her frilly dress did little to hide and everything to flaunt her faults. Worse was the utter blank behind her eyes, a void that Norrington would rather turn pirate than wake up to each morning. 

"It turns me into someone I don’t like," Norrington said. 

"But certainly one glass won’t get you drunk," Miss Ashton said with desperate determination. "It’ll certainly relax you." The Commodore’s mouth thinned in impatience, and he decided that it was time for desperate measures. Norrington stepped to the side to apparently avoid collision with another guest, but in actuality an excuse for the feigned stumble that spilled his cider onto the hardwood floor. 

"I’m terribly sorry," Norrington said, "let me summon a servant." 

"Oh, no, really, it’s nothing," Miss Ashton said, but Norrington was already gone, summoning a servant to clean up the mess. The Commodore hated to use the spill excuse this early in a party, since it only worked once. On the other hand, he did not want to explain that one glass was enough to put him back into the bottle it had been so hard to climb out of. 

Temporarily free, Norrington went to get more cider from the refreshment table, biting back his disdain for the decoration. He hated Christmas in the Caribbean. There were no evergreens, so the Ashtons were using a small coconut tree for a Christmas tree, and instead of evergreen boughs, the house was decorated with red and green ribbon. There were a few holly plants, but there were no fires in the fireplace, and the windows were wide open. The entire scene lacked the cozy warmth that went with Christmas in the Commodore’s mind. There was no snow, no cold to be cheery in spite of. It was all wrong, even after nine years. With a sigh, Norrington ducked into the darkened library for a few precious moments of solitude. 

He’d only been in the library a few moments when Pet found him. Mrs. Ashton had greeted Pet with a bit of holly, tying it to her collar with a large red bow. The red bow clashed with Pet’s salt-and-pepper fur, and the weight of the holly wasn’t anything she was used to. She often stopped to scratch at the strange weight, resulting that the rather mangled bow and its burden rested above her chest instead of her shoulder. The fox hopped up onto the table next to her master, whining a complaint about the decoration. 

"No reason for both of us to be miserable," Norrington said, and removed the bow. "Here’s a thought. Why don’t I marry you so the treasure-hunters will let me be? Hmm, _petite renard_?" Pet licked his hand, making her laughing bark. 

"Ahh, Commodore," a voice said. Norrington looked up to find Miss Myriel standing in the doorway. "Do you have a headache?" 

"No. I was merely," Norrington paused imperceptibly and picked up Pet, "looking for my fox." 

"Oh," Miss Myriel said softly. "I thought you might have been looking to be alone." Norrington knew instantly that a plot was afoot - Miss Myriel herself didn’t have enough empathy to think of such a thing. Pet stiffened, reacting to her master’s sudden caution. "Though now that you’ve found your fox, you’d like to rejoin the party?" Miss Myriel stood aside to let the Commodore pass through. Norrington ducked into the doorway, only to be stopped halfway through by Miss Myriel’s hand on his arm. "Look, someone’s hung mistletoe in the doorways," Miss Myriel purred. Norrington looked up. Indeed there was mistletoe hung in every doorway surrounding the ballroom. Norrington cursed himself for falling for such an obvious ploy. 

"You know what the tradition is behind mistletoe?" Miss Myriel asked, doing her best to be inviting. 

"I really don’t think that’s appropriate," Norrington said, backing against the door frame. He was cornered. 

"It’s tradition," Miss Myriel said, and leaned up and forward for a kiss. Norrington held up his hands to block the unwanted contact… while still holding Pet. 

The fox’s ears laid back against her skull in surprise, her small head jerking back and thumping Norrington in the nose. Pet’s surprise was exceeded by Miss Myriel, who found the Commodore’s kiss more hairy than she’d expected, and opened her eyes to meet eyes of black, not stormy green. Miss Myriel reacted as any other noble lady who’d inadvertently kissed a rodent-killing dogling. She screamed, wiping her mouth with the back of her hands. 

"You horrible man! What an awful trick to play!" 

"I’m terribly sorry," Norrington said while Pet made sounds of equal displeasure, "it wasn’t intentional." His tone was perfectly sincere. Indeed, he hadn’t planned on Miss Myriel kissing Pet, merely that the woman not kiss him. Norrington soothed his fox with strokes. _The worst possible thing I could do is laugh right now_ , Norrington thought suddenly, and promptly a smile of amusement tugged at his lips unbidden. It took the Commodore only a half-second to control himself, but it was enough. 

"You’re simply awful, not a gentleman at all! You and your awful little rodent!" Miss Myriel shrieked. 

"Pet is a canine, not a rodent," Norrington said. "And you have my deepest apologies for the misunderstanding." Everyone in the room had stopped to watch the Commodore and the socialite. _It would have been abominable if I’d laughed just then_ , Norrington thought, prompting an actual snort of amusement to slip by his control for a precious half-second. 

"I don’t care if she’s a cat," Miss Myriel cried. "Just because you’re a Commodore doesn’t mean you can treat me like this for your own amusement." 

"It wasn’t for my amusement," Norrington said, then fastened onto the advantages of the situation. "But you’re absolutely correct. My behavior was deplorable. I should leave, and once again I ask for your forgiveness." With that, Norrington headed for the door. _If I laugh now, I’m ruined._ The Commodore ruthlessly bit down the sound, but his shoulders shook. _I can’t laugh. I can’t._ But the entire situation was so lamentably funny! Norrington’s shoulders shook again as he fled for the door, holding onto his stoic expression by fraying determination alone. _If I can just make it outside…_

Mrs. Ashton intercepted him. 

"There’s no need to leave, Commodore," she said, the other socialite dowagers backing her. "As you say, it wasn’t intentional. And even if it were, it’s only a harmless prank. We forgive you." Indeed it seemed Mrs. Myriel had forgiven him. She was at her daughter’s side, coaching her on how to retrieve what seemed to be a hopeless situation. 

_I can’t stop it, I’m going to laugh_ , Norrington thought, his shoulders trembling. Pet remedied the situation by clamping down on the Commodore’s wrist hard enough to draw blood.

The pain snapped the impending merriment. It also gave him an excuse to leave the party, if only long enough to bandage the wrist. 

"I think you broke it, sir. Or rather, Pet broke it for you," Murtogg said, entering the kitchen to help the Commodore and check on Pet. "Commendable." 

"Broke what?" Norrington asked, bandaging the bite. 

"The Giggle Loop," Murtogg said. "It’s what my family calls what went on in there. Most people can’t stop the Loop until they actually humiliate themselves by laughing. Biting your cheek never works, but apparently needle-sharp fox bites do." Pet flashed her fangs at the redcoat, her tongue lolling. Murtogg smiled in amusement. "The good news is that once it’s broken, it doesn’t happen again for about twelve hours." 

"Wonderful," Norrington said. "Now what excuse do I have for the previous Laugh Loop?" 

"Giggle Loop, sir. Lieutenant Groves is already putting it about that you’ve not left the Fort before dark for days, what with year-end coming up and all." 

Norrington hummed in agreement and finishing the bandage. Seeing that Pet was unharmed, the trio went back into the morass of plotting gaiety.

Eager to avoid trouble, Norrington headed for the pianoforte in the corner of the room. A small girl of twelve was playing.

"Good evening, Commodore," the girl said politely. "My name is Rose Myriel. And I think what you did to my sister was very funny." Rose leaned closer, her fingers never pausing in the simple melody. "She really should have known better." 

"Indeed," Norrington said, his mouth twitching in amusement. Pet hopped up onto the piano, watching the hammers strike the strings. The tip of her tail twitched. The fox’s concentration on the mechanism was absolute. "You play very well, Miss Rose." 

"Thank you, Commodore." Rose kept playing. Soon, a small brown face peeked around the girl. The puppy’s body followed, and he crept across the girl’s lap. Then he slowly rested two paws on the piano and leaned forward, sniffing at the fox. Pet looked over at him, sniffed his nose warily. Upon determining this particular dog was too young to be a threat, she returned to her contemplation of the piano’s inner workings. The puppy watched the fox’s flicking tail with equal attention. 

"Do you play the piano?" Rose asked suddenly. 

"When I was a boy, yes. I haven’t played much since," the Commodore responded, considerably more relaxed than he’d been the entire evening. 

"I hope I still play when I’m a lady," Rose said cheerfully. "You can practice when I go to bed." 

As if summoned by those words, Rose's governess appeared. 

"Stop bothering the Commodore, Rose," the small, plump woman said, gathering up child and puppy. "It’s time for young ladies to be abed." 

"She wasn’t bothering me, Miss," Norrington said with a faint smile. "Truth be told, she has been one of my better conversation partners." Rose grinned back at him and followed her governess. Norrington sighed, thoroughly disliking the concept of bed time. The Commodore looked over at the piano, and gently fingered the keys, more for Pet’s entertainment than his own. 

"Capital idea, James," the Governor said, clapping him on the shoulder. "I haven’t heard you play in years. Give it a go." 

"I really couldn’t," Norrington said, backing away. 

"Oh, I understand," Swann said. "All these ladies to talk to, you’re probably not interested in chaining yourself to a pianoforte all evening. But I would so like to hear ‘Silent Night.’" 

Norrington took the Governor’s meaning and began playing. The Governor sang along, and soon the Commodore sat at the center of caroling. At first his notes were stiff and jerky. He really hadn’t played in some time. But his body remembered, and soon his melodies were smoother than Rose’s had been. 

Norrington enjoyed himself for the first Christmas party in a long time, even if Pet’s singing left much to be desired.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you are wondering what my descriptions of Pet's vocalizations are all about, Google "Finnegan Fox." It will change your entire life for the better. Also, Finnegan Fox needs foxicles, so check out his rescue's page.


	9. Commodore's Christmas

Christmas Day dawned crisp and clear. The sounds of waking children and happy families filled the warm Jamaican air, sounding clearly through the streets. On a day designed for family, the Commodore was alone, as were the lion’s share of his men. Hence, he and his men made their own family on Christmas morning at Fort Charles. Only those soldiers who had married Port Royal women were absent from the mess hall that morning. A stack of gifts stood in the corner, and bells tied with tartan ribbon hung in the doorways. There was no mistletoe. 

The men exchanged gifts and cheer. The Commodore was particularly pleased to be able to deliver letters from home to most of his men. The news from home brought cheer to many, though sorrow to some. Clarence White was disheartened to learn that his favorite sister had died in childbirth, whereas Mullroy discovered that he was to be an uncle. 

The cheer was called suddenly short at nine o’clock by the sighting of the _Black Pearl_ just outside of canon range. The _Pearl_ waited patiently for the _Intrepid_ to get her act together, then fled. The speedy snow gave chase, Norrington’s colors dancing in the breeze. The _Dauntless_ was far too slow to be of any use against the _Pearl_ and was left behind. The pirate ship stayed just yards outside firing range, drawing closer only to inch further away. 

Sparrow was toying with him, as he always did. It was time to turn the tide, so to speak. 

"Mr. Groves," Norrington ordered his Second Lieutenant, "have one canon loaded with powder only and fired while still inside the vessel. Also have buckets loaded with oakum set alight after the canon shot, the more smoke the better." 

"Aye, sir," Groves said, briskly heading down the stairs to the lower deck. 

"Mr. Gillette," Norrington said, "after the smoke billows, slow the ship and get us as close to being in irons as we can and still be able to move." The Commodore glanced down at the fox standing at his feet, a small smile playing on his lips. "We’re going to play dead." Pet’s muzzle opened in a predatory grin. 

As planned, when the canon fired and the smoke billowed, the _Intrepid_ slowed. In a creative touch, Gillette had the men scurry as they prepared for battle, carrying buckets with their muskets. He even managed to have the ship list somehow. To any who looked, it seemed that the Navy ship had suffered an accident. 

"Prepare the boarding lines," Norrington ordered as the _Pearl_ slowed. After a while, the pirate ship edged closer, and the _Intrepid_ opened fire. Captain Sparrow was caught utterly unawares, pleasantly surprised to find Norrington capable of trickery. Lashing out with canons and men, the crew of the _Black Pearl_ responded to the Navy assault, cursing their captain’s fixation upon the Fox Commodore. In the end, they only succeeded in defeating the Navy forces because a bigger problem presented itself: two ships with carmine standards. Ear-splitting cries echoed over the water. 

While the lone ship turned to face the Blood Flag pirates, the _Black Pearl_ fled. 

"Sorry, Commodore!" Jack Sparrow called. "You’re on your own." 

"We fight them, sir?" Gillette asked, white-faced. 

"If we cannot match speed with the _Black Pearl_ , we cannot outrun the Blood Flag. We fight," Norrington said softly. Pet growled at his side, and with a cry of their own the marines fought. 

In the end, though they fought like demons, the Navy men were outclassed and outgunned. The Blood Flag pirates succeeded in capturing the _Intrepid_ , and every man aboard faced a sailor’s worst fear. 

"Think of it this way," Gillette whispered with gallows humor, "we’ll get to see the Blood Flags’ captain." Norrington nodded, his throat too dry to speak. His heart pounded in his chest, and he could not warm the icy lump in his belly. Pet leaned against his leg, but she was no comfort. The only ransom the Blood Flag pirates took was money to ensure your loved one’s quick death. 

"Well, look at this," a voice said from behind the burly guards. A small man in a dark cloak stepped off the gangplank. "We think to pick up a new ship, and we snag the fearsome Fox Commodore and his little French kitten." The man’s gaze slid down to Pet, whose hackles were raised and teeth bared. "And the ‘creature that made him the Fox Commodore.’" The captain let down his hood. He had soft, feminine features beneath a head of short, dark hair. "I think that this justifies letting Jack Sparrow go, disgrace to the name of pirate he is." 

"We have a different idea of what disgraces the name of pirate," Gillette said, utterly unable to keep his mouth shut, "if that is even possible." The captain smiled. 

"The kitten has claws, even when a cornered rat." The captain walked over to Norrington. "Now shall we discuss terms?" 

"I wasn’t aware the Blood Flag pirates took terms," Norrington said, barely keeping his voice stable. 

"We give them. I want your ship and your crew. Your crew and your fox will stay here, and they will follow me to our port. There your ship will be stripped of any identifying features. Any of your crew who refuse to serve beneath me will be killed, the rest will be outfitted appropriately. And you… you will come aboard my flagship and serve as my hostage. If your men try to escape or do not follow my orders, you will die a very painful death. Those are your terms. Do you accept?" 

"I have no choice," Norrington said. He looked at Gillette, his gaze saying what words didn’t dare: at your earliest opportunity, escape. Gillette looked back, silently pleading for permission to mount a rescue, and cursing what that permission was denied. In all of five seconds, the seeds of rebellion were sown and watered. 

"Moncrieff," the captain ordered, and a tall man approached. "Have the Commodore outfitted in irons and taken aboard. See that whatever liquor he stores is brought to my quarters. I do hope you have good taste, Commodore." 

"You shall be sadly disappointed, for my private stores only contain mango juice," Norrington said as Moncrieff handcuffed him. The Blood Flag captain smiled. 

"Then I shall have it fermented into mango wine, Commodore. The same as your blood should your crew flee. Have you ever had blood wine, James? I shall have to introduce you." 

Norrington blanched as he was taken aboard, and Murtogg kept Pet from following. Gillette wished he were a fox, so he could have the luxury of not having to restrain himself. 

While the pirate captain inspected his new acquisition, Norrington was taken, not to the brig, but to fine quarters complete with bedroom, office, and dining room. Two guards were posted outside the door to prevent escape, and the cuffs were left on. Nevertheless, the accommodations were far finer than what the Commodore had expected - or felt comfortable with. He took a drink of water from the carafe, and then sat in one of the chairs. The bookshelf was lined with literature and technical books, it was almost a copy of his own library. The furniture was of good taste and solid construction, the bed large for a ship and comfortable. The dresser was filled with clothes too small for Norrington, and in the armoire hung one dress of fine red brocade. 

That fact alone made the lump in his stomach grow colder. The Blood Flag captain was apparently a sodomite, and these were his quarters. The Commodore fled the bedroom, taking what refuge he could in the dining hall. 

True to his fears, the pirate captain entered the quarters when the sun began to set. 

"I trust you’ve been uncomfortable?" the captain said. He removed his cloak, revealing two small but definitely present breasts. 

"You’re a woman," Norrington said before he could stop himself. Could the mastermind behind the Blood Flag atrocities really be a member of the gentle sex? Apparently so. 

"And you’re a man. You do know what the purpose of two genders is, don’t you?" the captain asked. Norrington nodded stiffly. "But make no mistake, being a woman in no way disposes me to mercy, and I will have you killed if you disobey." 

"You are degenerate and inhuman," Norrington said. 

"And you are docile and sermonic." The pirate captain smiled. "Your pretty regimentals bind you too tightly for you to enjoy them or the privileges of power." 

"The only privilege of power I need is the privilege of signing the execution orders of people like you," the Commodore responded. The knowledge of death had given him an odd freedom; it did not matter if he angered the captain, his death was assured the moment Gillette escaped. 

"A pity. The senses are ours for the enjoyment," the captain said. "I found your mango juice, James. I take it you found my dress?" 

"I did." 

"Good. Your fear must have been lovely. I’m sorry I missed it." The captain went through the office into the bedroom. When she emerged, she wore the dress and a touch of rouge. Crewmen brought food, spreading a feast upon the dining table. A crewman poured the Commodore a glass of wine, there was no other beverage served. At the last the Commodore’s manacles were removed. 

"Not afraid I’ll escape?" 

"My crew will shoot you seventeen times over if so much as your toe makes it across that door. Eat, you must be hungry," the captain invited. She served him roast pig, rich bread, pudding, and salad. She loaded her own plate with the same foods. 

"Poison?" Norrington asked. 

"Hospitality. The food is excellent, my cook works very hard at his duties. The wine is 1562 Chateau Picard, a very good year." 

"My thanks," Norrington said shortly, but he ate. He did not touch the wine. The woman’s ploy was far from obvious. Though he was obviously being plied, he did not know why. She had his ship, what else could she want? 

At the end of dinner, after discussing Shakespeare and Boudicea, the pirate captain disclosed her name to the Commodore. Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes alight, but Norrington was not fool enough to believe she wasn’t in full possession of her faculties. 

"My name is Diane, James. I think it suits me." 

"Diana," Norrington corrected. "The Roman goddess of the hunt and of women was Diana." 

"It’s a derivative," Diane said with a shrug. 

"What is it you want, pirate?" Norrington asked. 

"Want? Your ship, your crew." 

"You have them. Why play this… charade?" Norrington gestured to the food, wine, and fine quarters. "What is it you’re playing for?" 

"You really want to know?" Diane said, leaning forward, all traces of intoxication disappearing. Norrington nodded curtly. "If I so much as snap my fingers, I can have you strapped to Pavel’s table and let him have at you. No matter what military discipline you claim to espouse, in fifteen minutes you will be giving him whatever reaction I desire - screams, moans, begging. I’d rather get those reactions another way, Commodore. And further…" Diane rose and perched on the table next to the Commodore. Her eyes were like a hawk’s, fully intent on her prey. "Do you know why my pirates are the best at what they do? Because I obey the natural law: the weak exist only as fodder for the strong. My crews, everyone that serves beneath me, is strong. And as the strongest, I lead the Blood Flag pirates. 

"You, Commodore, are strong. Those who came before you made as much impact on piracy as Governor Swann’s wig. Some were corrupt, weak men ruled by the stronger pirates, others were just weak. You, on the other hand, with the same resources and education have managed to make piracy in the Caribbean very difficult. You have weeded out the weak among the pirate brethren, and now it is time to reap the rewards of that strength. 

"Think on it. How much does the Navy pay you? Join with me, captain your ship under my command, and I’ll triple, even quadruple what you earn. I take only fifteen percent of my ships’ plunder, the rest belongs to the captain and crew. You’ll have freedom to go where and when you choose, your pick of the prettiest of women. 

"I would even be willing to give you command of two ships, so you could retain your sobriquet, Fox Commodore. With the your cunning and the Blood Flags’ terror… gold will pour upon you like the rain, and fame enough to last thirteen generations," Diane was whispering in the Commodore’s ear now, her voice alive with avaricious passion and feral allure. Her hands rested on his shoulder and chest, lightly kneading the muscle beneath his uniform. "How can you resist it?" 

There was only one answer. 

"By remembering that I serve others, Miss Diane, not only myself,” Norrington said with precision and dedication. Diane pushed him away, standing in her fury. She paced, glaring at him like a spurned feline. 

"I am offering you pleasure and profit, a life many men weaker than you would die to achieve, and you are throwing it away?” Diane’s fists were clenched. “You are a fool, Commodore, for you fight against the entire Earth and He who made it. Look at nature, look at your beloved fox. The clever rats, the hale rats escape her. The slow and the stupid rats are her food. That is the truth. The only truth." 

"The only truth I acknowledge is this: I gave my solemn oath to protect the people of Port Royal and its adjacent ports from harm, from piracy and invasion. I will never forsake that oath nor my duty, not for gold or power or pleasurable company." 

"You forsook that duty by letting Jack Sparrow escape," Diane accused. 

"He did not deserve to hang for saving Mrs. Turner’s life," Norrington said with utter conviction. "You had best throw me in the brig, Miss Diane, for I will never turn pirate." Diane glared, every line in her body stiff. 

"Moncrieff!” She called, “shackle him and throw him in the brig with the other rats!" The dark-haired man entered and replaced the Commodore’s manacles. The Commodore’s jacket, vest, and shirt were removed, followed by thirty lashes. After the beating, Norrington was thrown in the dank and filthy brig. Not for the first time, Norrington wished officers could wear marines’ boots as he waded in ankle-deep bilge water. He retched with the smell and the pain, entirely certain that dinner would not taste as good coming up as it had going down. Furthermore, he didn’t want to waste what would most likely be his last meal for a long time. 

Norrington laughed. What would most likely be his last meal was more to the point. He waded over to the hull and looked out one of the small knotholes. The _Intrepid_ was still sailing between the two pirate ships. The battle damage didn’t look as bad from his cell. He hoped Gillette was managing better than he was. 

Gillette wasn’t. He was frantic, railing against his orders. Pet’s piping yelps provided a harsh counterpoint, while Groves and Murtogg harmonized in frustrated placation. 

"I swear that sometimes he thinks he’s the Second Coming of Christ, he’s got such a martyr complex. It’s like he wants to die in the line of duty in some horrible manner, and damned if the rest of us care enough to want to stop him!" Gillette shouted, pacing. Pet chimed in with a long series of barks. "What does he expect? He’s the first person I met in the Navy, Theodore! I can’t just leave him in the clutches of those- those- monsters! They’ll make certain it takes him three weeks to die. At the least." 

"I know, Andrew, I know," Theodore Groves said patiently. "I don’t want to leave him there any more than you do, but those are his orders." 

"And he’d never forgive us if we sacrificed crewmen to rescue him," Murtogg said. "He’d have us courts-martialed and you put in the stew pot. And that’s assuming we can escape anyway, which I don’t see a way." Pet howled, and Gillette let go another stream of imprecations. 

"I don’t care if we get turned to chum! We all owe Commodore Norrington our loyalty and even our… devotion. What use is that if we don’t at least try to save him? He’d give his life, is giving his life, for ours. How can we refuse to do the same?" Gillette said. Pet contributed, and Murtogg blanched. 

"We can’t do that," he said. 

"Exactly!" Gillette said, pleased that he’d won over one of his opponents, even if it was the one whose arguments didn’t make sense half the time. 

"No, Pet’s suggestion to let the crew decide by a vote," Murtogg stuttered. Gillette suddenly grinned. 

"Yes, we can, Murtogg. With Norrington gone, I’m in command, and I say we put it to a vote. He can’t possibly hang us all." With that, the Lieutenant strode from the office, Groves and Murtogg scurrying behind. Through a system of relays, the anxious lieutenants and the mad marine had their answer within four hours. The decision was unanimous except for the Master-at-arms: when the _Intrepid_ escaped, they would try to save the Commodore, or at the very least avenge his death.


	10. Damnation

From his cell, Norrington could see the dark clouds on the horizon. Steadily brewing, the storm moved ever closer. Norrington prayed that the storm would be nasty, a hellcat maelstrom that would allow the _Intrepid_ to flee unnoticed. And, though he knew it was stretching his luck, sink Diane and her precious ships. If he couldn’t see the soulless pirate hang, he would settle for seeing her drown. 

Turning from his peephole, Norrington surveyed his cell. There was no hound with a penchant for key theft in the Blood Flag hold, nor a bit of flotsam with which he could pick his bindings’ lock. A rat swam by, squeaking in an almost pitying manner. Norrington sloshed around his cell, testing the bars with no luck. He was well and truly trapped. Norrington sighed and forward against the bars, his back burning. It had been a while since he’d been under the lash. 

Norrington didn’t know how long he waited, listening to the rolling thunder and steeling himself for a slow death. Then the storm was upon him, rocking the ship and sending salt water coursing through the peepholes. While he knew that salt water would diminish scarring, it didn’t keep him from gripping the bars so his nails wouldn’t gouge holes in his palms. Also, gripping the bars kept him from being thrown about his cell while the ship plunged through the waves. 

After a seeming eternity, the crashing roar of the storm subsided, and the ship’s bucking stopped. A pirate came down to see if he was still alive, then left. More time passed, and then Diane herself strode down the stairs. She was back in men’s gear, wet and very unhappy. 

"Your faithless crew has abandoned you. They ran like rats during the storm that sank my other ship," Diane growled. 

"They acted as per my orders," Norrington said, as if this were a conference in his office instead of a cell. "I guess they were simply too strong to be your food. Or you were too weak to catch them. Whichever you prefer." Diane gripped the bars, her eyes over-bright. 

"I will see you eat those words," she said. "There is nothing that I am too weak for, nothing! Not even the massacre of a Navy crew." 

"If you massacre an entire ship, the Navy will rain down upon you like the fires of God. Every ship in the Caribbean and the Colonies that can be spared will be put to the task. They will neither slow nor stop until every pirate is dead, especially your monstrous fleet," Norrington promised with grim satisfaction. It would be an irony that his death would mass the fleet he could not summon in life, no matter how he pleaded with Admiral Harfayen for more men and resources. 

"You will not live to see it. Or rather, your mind will not. How much pain do you think it will take to drive you mad? Not much, I would imagine. Noble sensibilities are not bred to deal with harsh realities." Norrington did not reply, swallowing the metallic taste in the back of his throat. A living death was far worse than a true one. 

"Now to start." Diane gestured, and two pirates removed Norrington from his cell and chained him to the mast. Diane stepped forward and began to loosen the Commodore’s breeches. Norrington felt icy cold and burning hot at the same time. He couldn’t quite breathe. "I’ll go first, then Moncrieff," she looked up at Norrington. "Then whoever else wants a turn. A man as pretty as you should be rather popular, considering we don’t keep whores aboard and it’s been a good month since we’ve been to port."

The lump of metal in his stomach suddenly surged against his chest, his heart pounding. The woman’s comments about his desirability were lost in the rush of blood in his ears. A low, animal snarl filled the air. It took Norrington a few moments to realize the sound came from his own throat. 

Diane’s eyes became shrewd. 

"Does the thought of being whomever’s meat that wants you please you so? You Navy types are dirtier sluts than I’d thought." A crewman appeared, and told the captain she was needed above. The Blood Flag captain left, leaving Moncrieff to the prisoner’s torment. The tall, dark-haired man seemed quite happy to oblige. Norrington’s heart seemed no longer content with slamming against his rib cage and began surging against the back of his bared teeth. When Moncrieff approached, Norrington jerked forward, his chains the only restraint. 

"It’s odd what terror does to a man," Moncrieff said with the air of a man discussing a fine vintage of wine. "In this case, the man himself is lost in animal response. A pity, I had thought the Navy discipline to be conductive to something more... organized. But then, your posh upbringing didn’t quite prepare you for rape, did it, Commodore? You shall simply learn to adapt, then." Moncrieff stepped forward to begin his assault, and it seemed to Norrington that his heart exploded, sending hot power to every corner of his body. 

The chains snapped like thread during his next lunge. The Commodore lashed out, his open-palmed strike driving Moncrieff’s septum up into his brain. Norrington broke the first guard’s neck before Moncrieff’ body hit the floor. Norrington used the guard’s body as a shield against the second guard’s shot. Swiftly, Norrington crossed the distance between them and ended the fight with one sharp blow. He'd never made such open-handed strikes in his life. Nothing he was doing could be described as fisticuffs.

His keepers no longer a threat, Norrington looked around. He couldn’t go on deck, he needed another way out. He decided to make one, or rather, the instinct that controlled him did.

The Commodore walked with odd quietness to the hull. He surveyed the planking. Then his body lashed out in a straight-legged kick, sweeping and elegant. The planking buckled where he’d struck it. Four blows later, he had done what no man should have been able to: he had cracked the wood. The sea poured in on the weakened board, buckling it inward. Norrington worked his fingers into the cracked timber and pulled. The sealant tore free between the twin pressure of being pulled and being pushed by the sea, the heavy planking snapped on its other end. Norrington struck and tore again on the next plank down and the one after it as he sea poured inside. Norrington pushed himself through the hole, his newfound strength allowing him to move through the oncoming water and into the open sea.

Norrington swam as long as his lung-full of air and the agony in his back allowed, then surfaced. The Blood Flag pirates fired their muskets, and Norrington dived again. Pain in his arm told him he’d been hit. The pain was merely academic. It, like Norrington’s conscious thought, did not matter. 

Norrington swam, not certain where he was headed. Soon a pod of ship fish swam up to the odd traveler in their realm. The sang their clicking song to him, nudging him with their noses. Norrington gripped a particularly friendly one’s dorsal fin, then embraced it. The toothed fish seemed content to give the Commodore a ride. Norrington breathed when the ship fish surfaced, his terror fading into exhilaration. The ship fish swam far faster than any human being, as fast as a ship at full sail. 

After a while Norrington switched animals so as not to exhaust one, and found that all ship fish seemed disinclined to fear man. Soon an island appeared on the horizon. The island seemed to be the ship fishes’ destination, so Norrington stayed with the pod. He was correct. While the ship fish fed in the lagoon, Norrington swam ashore. Only when his feet touched sand did the pain and exertion tell on him. The Commodore staggered into the undergrowth and collapsed into a sleep not unlike the death he’d escaped. 

On board the _Intrepid_ , Pet stood, the dizzying weakness that had plagued her for the last hour fading.

* * *

When Norrington awoke, it was night. A cool ocean breeze stirred the Commodore’s dark hair and the surrounding undergrowth. Stiff and aching, the Commodore slowly got to his feet. He didn’t know what had possessed him during his escape, and at the moment why he was alive was secondary to maintaining that condition. Using twisted palm fronds and strips made from his stockings, Norrington made a splint for his arm. He cared for his arm in two stages, having blacked out from the pain. 

His wounds temporarily cared for, the Commodore began looking for the fresh water that fed the undergrowth. He found it and drank from it. Using his other stocking as a sponge, Norrington rinsed the salt from his back as best he could. Tired again by even that effort, Norrington again took refuge in sleep. 

Much later, Norrington addressed the issue of nourishment. He managed to break open some coconuts lying on the ground. He attempted fishing to no success, though he did collect enough wood for a small and hopefully unnoticeable fire. Scuttling the beach yielded two crabs which Norrington baked in his fire’s embers. After feeding himself, Norrington hid his trails and settled himself to the problem of rescue. A bonfire was out of the question. He had as much chance of summoning Diane as he did of bringing Gillette. A message of stones on the beach faced the same problem. Indeed, anything he did to attract the attention of the ship full of men who thought he was dead stood an equal chance of attracting the attention of the ship full of men intent upon making certain he was. 

What he really needed was a method of communication that would reach Gillette and Gillette alone. Like a messenger… Norrington looked back out into the small cove where the ship fish played. 

"On the off chance Mr. Murtogg isn’t mad…" Norrington said, then walked across the beach into the water. The Commodore paused, clearing his throat and feeling very foolish. One of the ship fish swam up to him, playfully splashing in the water. With a sigh at his own desperation, Norrington splashed the fish back and then returned to his thicket. 

After what felt like two hours of racking his brain, talking to the ship fish was still his best option. With a sigh, Norrington went back out into the cove and tried again. 

"Excuse me," Norrington said formally. None of the fish seemed to be paying any attention to him. "I’d like to thank you very much for bringing me to this island, first of all. It wasn’t anything you had to do, but you did, and I just wanted to show my gratitude…" Norrington trailed off. They were just animals. He was talking to animals, he was so desperate. The Commodore took a deep breath. This was the only plan he had, so he might as well go through with it. On the bright side, no one else was nearby to see him. 

Perhaps he was going about this in the wrong way. Ship fish lived in the water, not the air. If they were to hear him, he’d have to speak in the water. Norrington walked deeper into the water and knelt, grimacing. His wounds had scabbed over, so the salt water merely stung. Lowering his mouth into the water, Norrington repeated his previous statement. The ship fish still didn’t respond. The Commodore plunged ahead anyway. 

"I’d like to ask one further favor of you. One of my marines, Mr. Murtogg, seems to be able to talk with animals. Or at least he thinks he does. He’s on board my ship, the _Intrepid_ , along with Lieutenant Gillette and my fox, Pet. Could you bring them to me, please?" 

One ship fish swam over and butted against the Commodore. Norrington stroked the creature’s forehead, scratching lightly. The ship fish butted against him again. Norrington sighed, laying his good arm across the creature, energy seeming to drain from him. His best hope was talking to animals. He was probably never going to leave this island. 

"I need my Lieutenant, ship fish. I want Pet and Gillette…" Norrington whispered. The odd warmth that had heralded his strength rose again, and the ship fish turned from him and conferred with his pod. With a last burst of clicking song, the ship fish pod swam away. Again exhausted, Norrington returned to shore for another nap. 

While Norrington talked to ship fish, the men aboard the _Intrepid_ talked to each other. Maps spread on the tables before them, they calculated the Blood Flags’ possible headings and ways to intercept her. They had managed to locate their own position, but finding the Blood Flags and living up to their vow to avenge or rescue the Commodore seemed unlikely. Nevertheless, they persisted. The entire ship was ready for battle, men and muskets primed. All they needed was a target… 

Suddenly Pet, who sat on the corner of the table, stiffened. She sniffed the breeze, then snarled and trotted outside. She hopped up onto the stern railing, smelled the air again, laid her ears back, and growled. Turning to the crew, she let out a long stream of laughter that Murtogg heard and translated. 

"We don’t have to go looking for the Blood Flag pirates. Pet can smell them sneaking up behind us." 

"Then we’ll be ready," Gillette said with frightening vindictiveness. And they were. The Blood Flag was prepared for an unawares and weakened enemy, not one that even had a megaphone made of birch bark and leather stitching to shout at them with. Gillette demanded the return of the Commodore, punctuated by the cheers of the crew. Diane produced an amplification device of her own and took the opportunity to demoralize her enemy before the battle began. 

"Your Commodore’s already dead," she called scornfully, "we shot him in the back while he tried to escape. The coward couldn’t even face death with dignity." Diane refrained from mentioning the three foot hole he’d somehow torn through her hull with his bare hands. 

Gillette, upon hearing his superior was dead, sagged against the rigging, his strength temporarily sapped. The Commodore had been promised a slow death, the Lieutenant had been so certain the Commodore would be alive… 

Pet’s reaction, however, was very different. The fox howled, crying sounds more wolf than fox. And as she cried, the golden collar around her neck snapped. The golden band fell upon the deck, suddenly dull. Pet’s form grew and changed, until where the fox had been knelt a small Asian woman. Her hair and her hakama were as black as the wood sword and war fan tucked into her obi. Her kimono was white. In addition to human ears, two fox’s ears sprouted from where her bangs met her hair, the same color as Pet’s fur. The woman’s black eyes were open, tears streaming from them. From her throat emerged a fox’s howl of grief. Then she bowed her head.

"For two centuries, I prayed for the end of my imprisonment, for my master’s death that would free me. And now my master is gone, and I would gladly return to being a fox if it meant he was alive," the woman who had been fox said thickly, tears dripping from her pointed nose. "But I am no mortal maid," she continued, the tears stopping and her voice growing cold, "to shed tears without exacting a fearsome retribution." 

The woman tensed, then jumped the distance from the _Intrepid_ to Diane’s ship, a distance greater than a canon shot. The fox-woman sometimes seemed to be in multiple places at once, and sometimes nowhere at all. Her blade and war fan were fast as lightning, and no less deadly for being wood. The only sounds the crew of the _Intrepid_ heard for a long while were musket fire and the screams of dying men.

A little over an hour later, the sounds stopped. Through his spyglass, Gillette could see that no one moved on the Blood Flag vessel. He ordered his men to bring the pirate ship under their control. The Navy men boarded solemnly, and more than a few retched at the devastation on the deck. No one was alive. No one at all. 

Soon the fox-woman ascended the below-deck stairs. She was covered in gore, as was the lethal wooden sword at her waist. Without speaking, she walked to Murtogg, threw an arm around his shoulders, and began very softly to weep.


	11. Redemption

Murtogg took the weeping woman below, and Gillette numbly gave orders for the pirates’ remains to be dumped into the sea. The officers and seamen went about preparing the captured vessel for the journey to Port Royal in nearly-total silence. Not even the discovery that the Blood Flag vessel was full to bursting with plunder lightened their spirits. The victory was hallow. The fairest commander many of the men had ever seen had died to ensure their freedom, and a metamorphosed fox had wreaked the retaliation they had craved. 

Once it was clear the crewmen could handle themselves, Gillette left Groves in charge. The Lieutenant then went below himself, taking refuge in the senior lieutenants’ quarters. The hammocks were rolled up and the trunks neatly stowed away, but it wasn’t comfort Gillette craved. He wanted privacy, well, as much privacy as could be found on board a ship. Hollowly, the Lieutenant traced his hammock with his hands, surveying the cramped quarters he and Groves shared. Groves would have his own quarters, soon, Gillette had no illusions about that. With Norrington gone, Captain Black would be appointed Commodore and Groves would be promoted to Captain. An instant promotion for nearly everyone, a miracle considering the usually excruciating pace of peacetime promotion. 

Gillette’s hands tightened around the hammock. The Commodore was dead. 

Gillette tore the hammock from its moorings and flung the rolled bundle aside. Dead by his own choice. Gillette had been powerless to do anything about it. Gillette, James’s right hand and chief protector, had run like a cowed dog and left him to be killed. To be killed while escaping, while trying to return to his crew. 

Gillette’s hands found the other hammock and did similar damage. The trunks were kicked and heaved, the candle holders were torn from the walls, loose papers were shredded without care for their subject. Gillette vested his internal disarray upon his quarters, releasing the overpowering emotions that lied so close to the surface. The only sounds accompanying the destruction were choked gasps and the inaudible splash of tears upon the floorboards. When the room was in shambles and there was nothing left to break, Gillette collapsed in the center of the room. He’d taught himself to weep silently as a young boy to spite the instructors and bullies who’d punished him for daring to speak Irish aloud. The teachers were gone, but he held to those lessons still. 

At the same time Gillette was giving vent, Norrington was turning inward. Sitting in a makeshift shelter in a thicket of tropical underbrush, the Commodore stared blankly at the sand between his feet. His could not imagine how he had escaped the Blood Flag. With his bare hands he had broken iron chains, killed three men in the space of a few breaths, broken a hole in a ship’s hull, and then ridden ship fish to an island some miles distant from said vessel. All of this after taking a beating and with a musket impact having broken his arm. 

It was impossible for a man to be that strong. Nevertheless, his very existence proved that he had managed such strength. 

Also worrisome was the sensation of being separate from his actions that had accompanied the odd strength. The sensation had been eerily similar to the possessed feeling that had accompanied his epiphany during tea with Mrs. and Miss Myriel. It was the odd disconnection that worried him most. It was said that sometimes the mad boasted strength far beyond that of normal men. Could he have supposed correctly those months ago? Was he a lunatic? And assuming he was rescued, did he dare risk his ships and crew to his impaired judgment? 

On the other hand, in both cases the madness had helped him. He had been able to reconcile Elizabeth’s unintentionally harsh words because of his introspective spell. Without the mysterious strength, he would have been raped many times over by now. Norrington shuddered. That alone made the lunacy justifiable. Unsettling, but justifiable. 

The Commodore tilted his head back. Not the Fox Commodore, then, but the Mad Commodore, for there could be no other explanation. There were worse titles to bear, he supposed. What would be hard to bear was giving the order removing himself from command. A maniac could not be trusted with men’s lives. 

Norrington’s throat tightened, almost closing off his air. What would he do afterward?

He could always return home, it would make his mother ecstatic. He could marry a glittery maid and have a house full of children, living out his life managing tenants and account ledgers for his older brother. He could spend the rest of his life hunting nothing but foxes and sailing only to travel. Or he could stay in the Caribbean doing-- what? Looking always to the sea, watching Gillette do what he could not.

No, without the sea, his life would be barren. Nothing could fill the hole the loss of command would leave. Nothing could salve the shame of being demented. 

Suddenly, the hope of rescue seemed more like a curse.

* * *

It was nearly twenty minutes later that Gillette emerged from his quarters. In a voice cold, clipped, and composed, he gave orders to set sail for Port Royal with the captured pirate vessel. The Blood Flag dead had been disposed of, and a moderately cleaned-up fox-woman stood on the quarter deck. 

"Well, Mr. Murtogg, it seems we all owe you an apology,” Gillette said. He looked over the fox-woman’s still-spattered clothes. “What and who are you, exactly? Somehow I doubt you’re a cursed princess." 

"Hito Shinarashi. Not a princess, no. A kitsune: a fox-spirit, or demon, if you prefer," Shinarashi specified. "Cursed, yes. Two centuries ago I was trapped in fox form. I could only be freed by my master’s death. Before the one who cursed me died, he gave me to his son, who then gave me to his son, and so on. I always had a living master. I could not flee, for if I had no mortal master, I could not be freed by his death. However, last year – with very little to lose in regards to my sanity, I admit – I decided eternity as a fox was better than what I faced otherwise. I fled when the opportunity afforded itself, only to meet the Commodore in the tavern. He was the first mortal human to show me kindness," the demon finished. 

Gillette flicked his eyebrows, nodding as his anger dropped out from under him. Norrington had been the lone friendly face in Portsmouth. In some ways he’d always been the lone friendly face. Gillette had no illusions that with Norrington gone that he’d ever be promoted again. He’d be lucky to keep the rank he had. He swallowed, clinging to his composure.

"What will you do now?" Groves asked the kitsune. 

"I don’t know. Japan is still closed, I can’t go home. I can’t return to the Demon World without disastrous results, not while the Barrier seals off the Human World. Nor can I return to being what I was before the curse. I’m… beached, it seems," Shinarashi’s brows drew close together and her lips pursed. 

"Mr. Murtogg was telling the truth. You’re the mind behind the Commodore’s healing seven months ago, are you not?" Gillette asked. Shinarashi nodded. “You could have just let the Commodore die and been--” Gillette made a circular sort of gesture in the air “—finished with all this. I suppose that counts for something. Our surgeon is dead. I have a lot of wounded men below. See what you can do.” Murtogg led their acting surgeon to the cockpit. 

"Get back to work," Gillette snapped to the idling men on deck, or tried to. His voice came out without any heat to it. The crewmen bent themselves to their tasks anyway. Gillette looked out at the waves. A sharp clicking sound drew his attention. Looking down over the scuppers, Gillette saw a pod of ship fish playing about the hull. Upon seeing him, it seemed, the ship fish swam away. As Gillette watched, the ship fish returned to the ship and then swam away again. 

Their happiness was impossible to look at. Gillette looked away, moving along the deck to direct the return to Port. Once the ship was back in shipshape, or as close as could be expected without a stint in dry-dock, he met Groves at the wheel.

“The ship is yours, Theodore. I’m going to see how things are going below.”

“Sir,” Groves said, and Gillette almost laughed, “you’re the senior Lieutenant. You should stay on deck, and I’ll go below.”

“We both know the captaincy is yours, Theodore, the minute we get back to Port Royal. There’s no point in dragging it out.” Gillette bit the words off, his eyes burning.

“I could refuse.”

Gillette did laugh, bitter and brittle and short.

“Captain Black would give Midshipman Daniels command first. Nothing short of James ramming it down his throat would--” He’d said the name, like a blow to the throat that cut through his larynx. Gillette drew a deep breath. “Just captain the ship.”

His knees felt double-jointed and he was dropping like dead weight as much as he was stepping when he descended the stairs to the cockpit. Still, he shrugged off his coat, rolled up his sleeves, and presented his hands palm up to the fox-woman. “What do you need?”

Shinarashi was like a living typhoon. She stitched men’s flesh together like sail, pushed bones into place, cut away dead and mangled flesh, and called endless instructions to Murtogg. She moved from bed to bed in an order that made sense only to herself. Gillette didn’t understand why he was making endless trips back and forth to the cook stove boiling everything from knives to needles to thread in fresh water, but he did it. He boiled sea water and used it to scrub every surface with soap and a brush as he was bid, carried out the corpses and scrubbed everywhere they’d lain. He emptied and refilled the basin Shinarashi was endlessly cleaning her hands in, and cleaned his own hands in between corpse runs and cleaning no matter how duplicative it seemed. Gillette bent himself to the activity, letting it consume his thoughts. Murtogg sang when he could spare breath or thought, to keep the mens’ spirits up in the stifling dark of the cockpit. He had an uncommonly true voice. 

Then the rush of activity was over. Gillette felt it like surfacing suddenly from the water: his back hurt, his feet hurt, his hands hurt. He was so tired. Shinarashi knelt beside the last trunk. Seaman Langan was sixteen. He was shaking oddly.

“Belly hurts,” he choked out.

“You’re bleeding inside,” Shinarashi said, taking the boy’s hand. “If I had a proper hospital-- but with this…” She looked around the room and shook her head. “I’m so sorry. There’s nothing I can do.”

Langan’s lips pulled back in a grimace. A sob broke free, then another. Shinarashi sniffed. In the flickering lamplight, Gillette could see tears on her cheeks.

“I’m so sorry,” she repeated.

“Mister-- Murtogg,” Each word of Langan’s was punctuated with gasped, wet sounds. “Do you know the one about the seaweed? My mother used to sing it. I want to hear it again, please, please, Mr. Murtogg.”

Shinarashi looked to Murtogg, who shook his head mutely. He was English. Of course he didn’t know.

Gillette perched one hip on Langan’s trunk and took the boy’s other hand in his own. “My mother sang it, too.” 

Langan began to cry in earnest. No words, just grief. Whatever aspirations he’d had for his future, they were nothing now.

“A 'níon mhín ó, sin anall na fir shúirí, a mháithair mhín ó, cuir na roithléan go dtí mé,” Gillette sang gently. “Dúlamán na binne buí, dúlamán Gaelach, dúlamán na farraige, 's é b'fhearr a bhí in Éirinn.” He continued the song, not to its conclusion, but until Langan’s sobs stilled with his last breath.

* * *

Above-deck, Groves had the helm, and he seethed. It wasn’t that he didn’t want command.

He just didn’t want it like this. Gillette’s was the senior commission. He was meaner in a fight and cleverer on his feet, and Black had passed him over for a junior officer when the Commodore had been dying. Now the Commodore was dead.

Groves hated that Gillette was so defeated. He hated that Gillette was right to be.

"Lieutenant," the boatswain said. “Give me the wheel and look over the larboard scuppers, if you don’t mind, sir.”

Groves frowned. It wasn’t a typical request, but the boatswain was the oldest man aboard ship. He’d been pressed even before Norrington had joined on as Lieutenant. He nodded.

The boatswain held the wheel steady as Groves stepped over to the rail. He watched the ship fish dashing endlessly towards the ship and away.

"If a cur was acting the way those ship fish are, I’d say he was wantin’ us to be followin’ him,” the boatswain said. "I’ve been on the sea longer than you’ve been alive. I’ve seen ship fish be helpin’ a man stay afloat until his ship can get to him. And I’ve heard stories of ship fish helpin’ stranded men to shore. Now let’s say that the Blood Flag lass was wrong, and her shot didn’t kill the Commodore. Who’d better be for tellin’ us where he’d be than a group o’ ship fish? It’s as possible as the Commodore’s fox turnin’ into a woman, and we daren’t miss the opportunity." 

Groves stared at the man, a spark of hope lighting in his heart. If the Commodore had had the presence of mind not to surface after being shot, it was probable that the pirate captain had just assumed Norrington had been killed. That far from land, they wouldn’t have even bothered to make certain he was dead, trusting the sea to end what they’d begun. Then, as Norrington treaded water, a pod of ship fish had carried him to land… The boatswain was right. It was hope, a hope Groves couldn’t ignore. After all, it _had_ turned out the damn fox _could_ think.

Groves retook the helm and turned the vessel toward the ship-fish’s heading when they swam away from the vessel. He called orders to adjust the sails.

The pod streaked into the distance, the _Intrepid_ following behind. Groves said every prayer he could recall. 

At long last an island came into view. The _Intrepid_ pulled as close to shore as it could, and a bucket of salted fish was thrown overboard for the ship fish. Two search parties were being readied when, much to everyone’s shock, Commodore Norrington walked out from the underbrush. He was ragged, dirty, and wigless, his arm was in a hatchet-job sling, but he was moving under his own power. 

"Holy Mary, Jesus, and Joseph be praised!" a sailor cried. The men cheered wildly, doubling the pace of reading a longboat. Other men shouted the news down the stairs to those below decks. Gillette and Shinarashi, summoned by the confusion, ran up the stairs and weaseled through the crowd of men. Upon seeing the Commodore alive, they began screaming as loudly as the crew. Throwing an arm about Gillette’s shoulders, the fox-woman gestured with the other to the sea. The sea water swirled up from the coral pool, grabbed the Commodore, and deposited him gently on the deck. The longboat was abandoned, as was every other post. 

Norrington was passed from group to group, gripped and buffeted by grinning sailors who took care to jostle the Commodore’s arm as little as possible. At last the Commodore made his way through the crowd to Gillette. Though uneasy about his mental state, the Commodore’s face was split with a large grin that would have quite shocked Will Turner. 

"You captured the Blood Flag flagship, Andrew!" Norrington paused for a half-second upon seeing Shinarashi, then said, "and why is there a sea witch on my ship?”

Gillette and Shinarashi, both quite overcome, threw their arms around the Commodore. Murtogg wasn’t certain what was going to split first, his face for grinning or his heart for happiness. Indeed, Gillette, Shinarashi, and Norrington wondered the same thing about themselves. 

A short time later, Norrington was dragged below. Shinarashi tended the Commodore’s arm as he answered the Lieutenants’ demands about his escape. Through gasps and cries of pain while the oddly-dressed woman tended to his arm, Norrington detailed his rather unlikely escape. He finished with his own explanation of his unusual strength and his decision to remove himself from command. Silence greeted his words. 

"A variant of fox madness," Shinarashi said softly, breaking the stunned stillness. Everyone looked at her. "That level of strength you describe is normal for a kitsune. As my master, you took the power from me you did not have yourself using the curse as a… sort of aqueduct. The dissociation was caused by your corporeal nature’s inability to fuse with the sudden rush of demon power. There’s no reason for you to forfeit command, Norrington-sama." 

"Who are you, exactly? Where’s Pet?" Norrington demanded.

"That is Pet, James," Gillette said softly. "And this is no more unbelievable than undead pirates." To prove the veracity of Gillette’s statement, Shinarashi shifted shape. Pet hopped up onto the medical table Norrington sat on and swished her tail. Norrington’s eyebrows threatened to fly off his forehead. Pet changed back to her natural form, still sitting on the table. She then explained the curse and her transformation with Murtogg, Groves, and Gillette supplying auxiliary information. After they finished, they waited for Norrington’s reaction. 

"You were aware… the entire time?" he gasped indignantly, flushing. The prospect of having had a woman sitting on the edge of his bathtub for the past year was mortifying. "And if I’m alive why are you… human-looking?" 

"My tastes change with my form, though my personality stays the same. Rat isn’t an appetizing meal now, where it is as a fox." Shinarashi shook her head. "Being viewed as an animal is normal to me when my form is an animal. And when I tried to talk to you, you thought you were insane, so I didn’t press." Shinarashi stopped, and after a few moments said, "I’m-- not actually certain why the curse is broken." 

"Why were you cursed?" Gillette asked. He was leaned back against the cockpit bulkhead with his arms folded. Even with the commodore returned, the skin under Gillette’s eyes was dark.

"For killing every human I met for seven decades," Shinarashi said. "My name is a contraction of ‘shin no arashi.’ Storm of Death." 

"In that case… why would a freedom hinged upon death do any good? All it would teach you is to hate men more. And the curse ended, not when the Commodore was to have died, but when you learned of his ‘death.’ I think it was your grief over a mortal human that was the goal," Gillette finished. 

"Andrew, you are a marvel," Groves said admiringly. "That’s got to be it." Shinarashi glanced at Norrington. His brows were drawn sharply together, his mouth pressed in a thin line. After several minutes, he stood. 

"Gillette, set course for home. I will inspect the ship and then think upon the current… situation. I will have my decision by the time we reach Port Royal," Norrington said with military crispness. "Mr. Groves, please see if anyone has a wig I may borrow. As for you, Miss Shinarashi… you seem to be doing fine here. Carry on." Pet’s shoulders jerked, but she looked up from the floor. 

"In Japanese the surname is given before the given name.” 

"Very well then, Miss Hito." With that, Norrington left the cockpit for the deck. Gillette followed. Murtogg stayed with Shinarashi. 

"He just needs some time," Murtogg said gently. "The Commodore’s a good man, he’ll come around once he gets used to the idea." 

"You didn’t need ‘time.’" 

"I already knew you were’t a normal fox," Murtogg said patiently. Shinarashi snorted, then scrubbed her face with her hands. There was work yet remaining: these strange mortals she had found herself among stitched their dead into their hammocks. She had plenty of dead left.


	12. Adaptation

When Port Royal came in sight of the crow’s nest, Norrington had indeed come to his decision. With a steady tread, he entered the cockpit. He was surprised at its cleanliness and the empty state of the amputation tub. The men were laid out upon the deck and the few tables in better condition than they’d ever been under the previous physician’s care. 

"Yes, Norrington-sama?" she asked. 

"Sama?" the Commodore asked. 

"A suffix denoting the most respect possible for one being to give another." Norrington nodded at the spirit’s words, his face unreadable. He gestured that Shinarashi should follow him and led the way to his office. Even in that privacy, his military demeanor did not change. 

"You may stay aboard as a physician, as per Gillette’s suggestion. Your experience and skill are far beyond anything another doctor could provide my men. Also to consider is your claim that the strength of ten men is normal for you, and your demonstrated ability to control the very waters. In a storm or a fracas, both will prove useful, especially should we encounter another supernatural being. As for your lodging, you may stay in the servant’s quarters of my home, or rent another establishment, whichever your desire," Norrington said, clipped. 

Shinarashi nodded. "I’ll begin looking for a new place to live." 

"If that’s what you desire," Norrington said with a nod. Shinarashi turned to leave. Her hand was upon the knob when Norrington called, "wait!" The kitsune turned around, her face calm and eyes glittering. 

"I would prefer you stayed with me… in the servant’s wing for sake of propriety." Norrington sighed, sitting down at his small desk. "Could you…?" He made a swirling sort of gesture in the air. Shinarashi tilted her head, considering, then shifted. Pet jumped onto the desk. Much of the tension left Norrington’s bearing. "Though this form must be loathsome to you after centuries of imprisonment, it’s--" Pet tilted her head. After a deep breath, Norrington continued, "I can’t ignore that you’re a reasoning being, and there are rules that must be obeyed. A woman to whom I am not married cannot share my bed or bath." 

_I understand._ Norrington jerked at the unexpected feeling of Pet’s thoughts in his mind. _But I see no reason for the general public to know that fox and doctor are one, at least for awhile._ Pet paused. _If what Benjamin says is true, they will hang me for witchcraft, even though I am not one of your Dark One’s minions._

"They would," Norrington said. It was somehow easier to speak with a talking fox than a fox-woman. "I can order my men not to talk of this to civilians, though many will disobey. But who believes a drunken sailor’s ravings? Many of the civilians still don’t believe in Barbossa’s men." 

_And who would believe a mad marine?_ Pet said gently. _You owe Benjamin an apology._

"I know. But the question is, how did he know?" 

_He’s a Magic Seer. He can see magic, and see through magical illusions. That ability will serve you in good stead. Just because I am unwilling to destroy the Barrier separating Ningenkai from Makai - separating the Human World from the Demon World - does not mean that others are not. The Aztec curse has weakened the Barrier in the Caribbean. Those mages and magic creatures who wish to cross over may cross here, and those of ill intent will jump at the chance to wreak havoc in a world no longer adapted to deal with them. And with each crossing, the Barrier will weaken. With enough crossings, it will be no more._

"Can we repair it?" 

_Yes and no. The human mages living in Makai can repair it, and they probably will. It was the Divine’s will that magic and mundane be unified, each complimenting the other. However, over the centuries, the human mages came to believe that they belonged to a higher plane, that their gift made them better than everyone else. Just before your Renaissance, they transported everything of magical nature to Makai and erected a Barrier between the two worlds. The outpouring of energy is what fueled your Renaissance, actually._

_The Barrier and the separation it causes is unnatural. As a kitsune I am governed by the natural law, and I cannot disobey. I will help your culture adapt to the influx of magic, and I will protect you and your people from the ill-willed creatures, but I may not and will not repair the Barrier. The protection I provide and the healing of your sailors will be my atonement for my attempt to exterminate your race._

Pet licked the Commodore’s nose. _I will follow where you lead and defend you with my last breath, Norrington-sama._

"Thank you, Pet," Norrington said softly. "If the Barrier collapses, what will happen?" 

_Every magical creature from legend and every human with magical power will no longer be held in Makai. Ningenkai will return to being as it was before. And those creatures from Makai who wish to visit Ningenkai will no longer be barred from doing so. The reverse is also true. It will be a century of chaos until the your people learn to re-adapt. After the century, things will be as they should be again._

"Can we defeat the ill-willed Makai creatures?" Norrington stumbled over the foreign noun. 

_Yes._

"Then we shall." Norrington called Groves and Gillette in, and asked Shinarahi to explain to them what she had told him. Shinarashi shifted shape and explained again aloud.

"The task set before us is not easy,” he said when the demon had finished speaking, “should the mages repair the Barrier or should they not. We stand between the light of men and the darkness of monsters, and we must stand fast. We will stand fast."

The adventures of Commodore Norrington continue in:  
"Mongrel Commodore." 


End file.
